


Always Messing With the Big Guns

by utlaginn



Series: do something while your heart is thumping [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anal Sex, Barebacking, Between Seasons/Series, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Bottom Keith (Voltron), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Corporal Punishment, Drinking, Drunken Shenanigans, Episode: s04e01 Code of Honor, Explicit Consent, Fade to Black, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hook-Up, Introspection, Light Angst, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Making Out, Naxela suicide mission, POV Multiple, Pining, Post-Battle, Quantum Abyss (Voltron), Relationship Study, Resolved Sexual Tension, Season/Series 04, Team as Family, Timeline What Timeline, Top Lance (Voltron), and a discussion thereof, blade of marmora, but ultimately follows seasons 4 through mid-7, gaps between canon, i wasn't even gonna tag angst so thanks for the feedback, of a decidedly non-romantic nature they would have you believe, referenced future pairings, smut in chapters 2 and 4 and 6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25502284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utlaginn/pseuds/utlaginn
Summary: Keith’s slow retreat from Team Voltron is complicated by many things: not least of which is his abrupt hookup with one Lance McClain.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: do something while your heart is thumping [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847497
Comments: 88
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been working on this all quarantine. :D
> 
> Credits:  
> \- Thank you so much to my betas! [Rissa](https://bnha-aesthetic.tumblr.com/) has been there since I started editing this thing in June.   
> \- [Title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV6BYh0V38E) (for this whole series) comes from Jenny Lewis’s first album.

_07.24.2115 (Earth reckoning)_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; orbit above Olkarion; Black Lion_

“Can you talk about it?”

Lance asks this question so easily, over the comm between Red and Black. Keith can’t see Lance’s face; but he can imagine the concern even over the unfathomable distance of air and metal and armor separating them. They’re currently barrel-rolling through one another’s wakes in the clouded upper-atmosphere, joy-riding over the planet’s surface like they have the time and energy to waste.

Until about twenty minutes ago, Keith had been flying solo, not so much trick-flying as sketching his thoughts against the sky. He had returned from his intel mission on that ancient, underwater Galra base, assisted with the mission in Fehm System, and then made some excuse about wanting to run Red through her paces after how out-of-sync she’d felt during the mission.

Even when he’d tried to come back down, he’d found he couldn’t make it past the exosphere. He could barely dip the Black Lion into the space where Olkarion’s most long-ranged communications satellites swooped like swans over a red-gold lake. He’d been stalling; he didn’t want to hear what he’d missed, from Team Voltron, nor did he want to explain that while he’s getting better, while his skills are improving, he’s not fitting in among the Blades any better than he’d ever fit in anywhere. So he’s trailed the Black Lion through the upper layers of Olkarion’s atmosphere, wasting time he definitely did not have.

If one person knows how to properly waste time, among the otherwise type-A personalities of Team Voltron, it’s the Red Paladin.

That’s not an insult. Keith, piloting Black, realizes with a jolt: it’s _fun_ , for the first time in a long time. Lance knows how to put people at ease. Certainly, he’s better at that than Keith is. So it’s not a surprise that Lance tries to talk to him, once he’s lulled him into this state. Lance’s question sounds almost like an afterthought, like a casual wondering as he causes the Red Lion to burn a little hotter against the sky and leaves a stream of glowing contrail where he’s just been.

But Keith doesn’t need to see Lance’s face to hear the honesty, the _curiosity_ , in the question. Lance is an extrovert. He has this easy way with language, with asking people invasive and inappropriate questions. He’d probably ask Keith if he could talk about “it”—about his most recent failure with the Blade of Marmora—even if they were standing face to face, instead of out in their Lions.

Keith sighs under the helmet of his red paladin armor.

_Can he talk about it?_

Can he talk about the fact that after he’d managed to save Regris—and the vital data he’d had with him—he’d still gotten an earful about how he might lead Voltron, but he certainly doesn’t lead the Blades? And if he wants to learn from them, if he wants to help, he’ll damn well learn his place and follow orders for once? Can he talk about the fact that, when he got back to Team Voltron and his spot as ostensible leader, Pidge and Lance sniped at him like he has to answer for his every move to _them_ , too?

And sure. Lance is angry with him.

He’s been mad at Keith, with his divided loyalties, for weeks. The higher-ups in the Blade of Marmora are mad at him, too. Kolivan still defends his place there, but Keith hadn’t missed the coldness in the older Galra’s voice when he’d told Keith: “You broke protocol.”

“Keith?” He hears Lance tapping at his helmet like a child tapping on a fishbowl. “This thing on?”

“Yeah, Lance, I can hear you,” Keith says, spiraling in wide, easy arcs. The Black Lion leaves purple scrapes, ribs against the spine that is the Red Lion’s wake.

“Oh. Because…” Lance sighs. “Never mind.”

“…Sorry.”

Keith apologizes, because Lance keeps brushing him off when he won’t explain himself. But like he’s told Shiro already, Keith shouldn’t even be in this position. He doesn’t want to have to be accountable in this way, doesn’t want to be leading Voltron in the first place. He doesn’t have room for thinking about the big picture: the people they’re saving, the refugee base they’re building, the Coalition they’re forming. Not when the “little picture” plays out behind his eyes when he goes to sleep at night: the snippets of data, the possible connections to Lotor…

_The conspiracy theories_ , an unkind part of himself taunts.

“It just sucks, you know?” Keith finds himself saying, over the comm. “Usually the missions aren’t bloody. They’re like… cool espionage shit, and taking out the odd sentry.”

“Not, like. James-Bond-level explosions?”

The dry laugh is forced out of Keith, he swears. “Only once we’re done planting bombs and past the extraction point. Anyway it’s… it’s not usually up-close-and-personal. Or struggling with someone who’s trying to choke you out with their bare hands because-”

_Because you’ve disarmed them and they don’t have a choice—the fear of death is so clear in their eyes—but you’re trying to save a teammate, a_ friend _, fuck the mission, but_...

Keith takes a deep inhale and makes himself stop talking. He starts downward in a nosedive that maybe looks impressive but is in fact cowardly, taking Black down below the point where he can see Olkarion’s sun. Red follows—and then surges forward, shepherding both Lions to hover down into the capital city that has become the center of the Voltron Coalition.

“I know, man,” is all Lance says, as the Castle of Lions’ spires spring onto their HUDs. Glowing blue, amidst the golden glow of the Olkari’s more organic structures, they are more comforting than anything and Keith finally feels like he doesn’t have to _make_ himself take deep breaths.

Keith knew Lance would bring them here, eventually. Lance has always had Keith’s back. It doesn’t matter how pissed off he clearly is at Keith. No matter what Lance’s body language has told Keith, lately—ever-so-slightly tensed and tilted away, hands fisted in his pockets—Keith knows Lance will understand, eventually.

“I don’t know exactly what you and the Blades are doing. But I do know that it’s got everyone… off. It’s not just you, Keith.”

They set their Lions down against Olkarion’s surface.

“I know that,” Keith acknowledges. He also knows that he sounds disgruntled, and resentful, and that his emotions are petty and selfish in the face of the bigger picture.

“Everyone is… on-edge,” Lance tells Keith, finally, as they both exit their Lions and move to stand in the circle of five: the Lions of Voltron standing in the city square, proud symbols of their rebellion. “Which as Team Leader, you should know. Like you said. I _know_ you know that.”

That’s not an unfair observation.

It stings, still.

In Keith’s experience, support never comes without pain, and guilt, and obligation. So it’s fine. This slow feeling of endings and closures and _over_ , as he takes in the confusingly slow Olkari sunset, is...

It’s fine.

( _“It’s the way the sun sets beyond the mega-mountains,” Lance had insisted, once, when they’d first made their base here. “It’s like dusk goes on forever.” And it’s true; instead of being a quick, liminal thing—the way it is on most other planets that spin on an axis, anyway—twilight on Olkarion is half the day. It’s been an adjustment, learning to live like that_.)

Lance and Keith meet at the castleship’s base. They take off their helmets, waiting for the hovercraft to afford them a way back in. Lance is quiet for long enough that Keith can watch in real time what plays out behind Lance’s eyes: a future without a team.

Keith knows how big a part he, himself, plays in that.

“Man, if we don’t do some kind of saving-grace team-building move, and soon…”

Keith waits.

Until the waiting makes him ask, “What did you have in mind?”

As the little hovercraft lands before them, and they step into it, Lance just smirks.

“I’ll figure something out.”

***

A few nights later, the Garrison three—and Keith—are to be the only ones on board the castleship.

Quoth Coran, “Team Voltron is doing diplomacy up right this evening!”

By “right,” apparently, Coran means that he, Allura, and Shiro are headed to a glittering hall that went up seemingly overnight in the now-bustling refugee city-center. This settlement had been a tent-camp until, as if by magic, the Olkari had worked their living tech into beautifully integrated structures that looked like they had been there millennia.

The three eldest stand on the bridge of the Castle of Lions in fancy dress, their princess in a gown, hair trailing down her back, Shiro in something that looks like a formal military uniform, and Coran- well, Coran’s outfit involves a cape, pants that are entirely too tight, and—well, Keith tries not to look at him too closely. He suspects he’s not the only one.

As Shiro announces their departure, he suggests the other paladins get some rest.

“I know exactly what that means,” Lance mutters, hands shoved in his pockets. “You’re saying this is a grown-up party and _we_ are still stuck at the kids’ table.”

The three “grown-ups” glance at one another.

No one corrects Lance, but Allura tries to smooth things over, the way she always does.

“Honestly, I- _we_ didn’t think you’d be interested.”

She looks and sounds apologetic, worrying her gloved hands together as she stands there, Olkarion’s evening light sparkling on her jewelry. It’s harder to be annoyed with her when she looks so much the part: silver dangling from her neck and at her temples, her diadem set with stones that are probably much more rare than the sapphires they look like. If truth be told, Keith _is_ annoyed—if not as annoyed as Lance—to have been left out without being consulted. But if the _truth_ of the truth be told, no one else cleans up as well as Allura or Shiro. So, for Voltron’s sake, he won’t complain.

Allura continues, having dropped her hands to smooth out the silver embroidery along the deep-blue velvet of her bodice. “In fact, it’s going to be terribly… well.”

“It’s dancing, not a coordinated show with the Lions,” Shiro says, bluntly. “Can any of you four actually dance?”

Keith just shakes his head while Pidge chirps, “Nope.”

“Not unless you’re talking about the cha cha slide,” Hunk adds. “And even then I’d want a reminder on the order of the steps…”

“I can dance,” Lance says. Under his breath, he adds, “Probably better than anyone else here.”

Hunk bursts out in a decidedly unhelpful cackle. 

“Dude, he’s probably not talking about the kind of dancing we did in town in Arizona.”

“I am absolutely not talking about _that_ kind of dancing,” Shiro says. The little raise of his eyebrows suggests he is not as aware as he should have been of the shenanigans Lance and Hunk got up to at the Garrison.

“Regardless,” Coran says, holding up a very fancy looking scroll. “The invitation’s only for three!”

“But we’re Voltron! That doesn’t get us an open-ended invitation?” Lance asks.

Coran pulls at one well-groomed mustache. “One can never be too careful with diplomatic formalities. The invitation is for three, so it looks like you four are out of luck.”

Lance rolls his eyes and groans. “Fine. But if you don’t bring back incriminating pictures of someone dancing to something trashy I will have to consider this a great waste of Team Voltron’s time.”

“Oooh, if you’re bringing anything back, I wouldn’t mind if you brought some little appetizers. Fancy party- they’ve gotta have little appetizers-”

As Lance and Hunk continue to list off the souvenirs they want brought back from the soiree, Allura, Shiro, and Coran bustle into the bridge-to-surface conveyor. The little hovercraft leaves just enough room for the floating layers of Allura’s skirts. Lance’s eyes follow them pitifully, and Allura’s gloved hand gives a little wave of goodbye before the craft vanishes downward into the chute.

And then Lance turns back to Pidge, Hunk, and Keith.

He’s smirking.

“Meet me in the lounge in a quarter-varga,” he says, with some weight.

Nobody moves.

“Lance,” Hunk says, hesitant. “Are you planning on following them or something? I know Allura will look great waltzing in that wedding cake of a dress but…”

Pidge, on the other hand, glares suspiciously at Lance’s relieved expression from above the rims of her glasses. “Wait… You did that on purpose.”

Lance just keeps smiling. “Did what on purpose?”

“Got them out of here so fast,” Pidge continues. “ _And_ made sure that they aren’t likely to hurry back. Just to spite you.”

Lance shrugs, shaking his head as his grin widens. “Shoulda figured you would’ve caught on, Pidge.”

She’s smiling, wide and open. “It’s genius, actually. As a younger sibling, yeah, that’s generally how you get an older sibling to leave you alone,” she agrees.

“Beg to come with them,” they say, in unison.

  
  


True to his word, Lance struts into the lounge, fifteen doboshes later. Hunk follows him, having changed into pajama pants, but Keith thinks no one else needed more than a few ticks to move from the bridge to everyone’s favorite pleasure spot on the ship. Pidge is sitting on the floor, a laptop propped between her knees and the low table in the center of the sunken couches; she’s already started muttering to herself. And Keith has made decent headway on sharpening his knife. It may be a magic, lucite blade; but it’s still metal, and he’s still probably harder on it than he ought to be. But at Lance’s over-exaggerated, “Ahem,” Keith looks up. He notices Lance is wearing that ridiculous Altean robe he’d commandeered when they first boarded the Castle of Lions. He’s also hiding something behind his back.

Keith has a bad feeling about this.

“Did you know,” Lance begins, dramatically. “That we’ve been in space one year, two months, and seventeen days?”

“…Probably slightly inaccurate,” Pidge mutters. “But I’ll allow it.”

Lance doesn’t seem to hear her. “And do you know how I know this?”

“Because you’ve been keeping count like a loser?” Keith asks.

Lance ignores him, too. “Because today… Today is my nineteenth birthday.”

Three voices clamor to say something first:

“Oh, dude! How did I not know that!? Happy birthday!”

“Still think you should leave the math to Pidge.”

“...On second thought, Keith is probably right, what with time dilation and-”

“Whatever, guys!” Lance shouts. “Except you, Hunk, you are the best friend a guy could ask for. And so you will have the place of honor, helping me out with this.” Here, he brings his arm out from behind his back, setting down a perfectly-innocent looking ceramic water jug down on the table.

“This is what I want for my birthday.”

“…For us to stay hydrated?”

“No, Pidge,” Lance says, with exaggerated patience. “This is not water; and we are going to finish this entire bottle even if it kills us.”

Hunk, who has already stood to accept his “place of honor,” looks down at it dubiously. “I dunno, man. You know me and my stomach. If that’s what I think it is, it might actually kill me.”

Lance smirks. “I have been assured by a Very Reliable Source that this right here is the good stuff—the stuff that’s guaranteed not to leave anybody humanoid with anything worse than a hangover. It’s not going to poison us. Unlike last time!”

“Well that’s comforting,” Pidge says under her breath. “Although admittedly last time was Coran’s fault—should’ve known, with the Alteans’ constitution, that the stuff that’s almost too strong for them is probably deadly to humans.”

“Regardless,” Lance articulates, slowly, clicking each fingernail on the table in turn. “In honor of my birthday, we are going to partake of this non-poisonous space booze, get drunk, and stay up too late telling stories and being stupid kids. Because-”

Lance stops, suddenly. He says this last word with such conviction that no one else even opens their mouth.

He doesn’t seem to know how he wants to finish, however. Keith finds that he feels sorry for him. He would much rather suffer a Lance over-excited about what Keith can only assume is a jug of space moonshine than a Lance looking like a kicked puppy.

So, he asks, “Because what, Lance?”

Keith does not miss the little smile Lance offers him. “Because we may still be at war, but there’s only so much each of us can do. And this is something I can do.” Lance takes four small metal cups, rattling as he slides them from the mouth of the bottle. He sets them in a row as he continues. “I can see us all getting so caught up in our own stress that soon we’re not even gonna be a team anymore—just, just soldiers, and nope. No way. That is not how this goes down. Not on my watch.”

“Absolutely not,” Hunk suddenly agrees, grabbing the jug and pouring a thin stream of obnoxiously orange liquor into each of the four cups. “I hear you, buddy. I’m in.”

“Me too, I guess,” Pidge says, though she’s smiling.

“Keith?”

Lance raises a careful eyebrow at him.

Keith uncrosses his arms.

“You may be a sentimental dork,” Keith says, holding out a hand, expectant. Hunk presses a little metal cup into it. He raises it to his lips and takes a not inconsiderable sip, eyes locked with Lance’s. He exhales the exotic sting, trying not to make a face as he says, “And this may be disgusting, but I’m not about to turn down free alcohol.”

Lance smiles—and it only gets warmer when they raise their glasses to toast.

“Then we agree. _Salúd_.”

“ _Tagay_!” Hunk adds. Then, he starts to fret, “Um, but what about Shiro? And Coran and Allura? You don’t want them to celebrate your birthday with you?”

Lance has that look in his eyes again, and Keith braces himself for him to say something else meaningful and full of feeling. Lance does not disappoint.

“All seven of us are a team, sure. Family, even: Shiro is Space Dad, Allura is our Space Princess, Coran is- Weird Space Uncle. You guys are just… my best friends.”

“Laaaance.”

Keith shakes his head, fingers pressed to his temple. “Ugh, that’s terrible.”

Pidge looks sideways at Keith. “The liquor, or Lance being sappy?”

“Both,” Keith answers, taking another swallow.

She raises her own little cup to her nose, takes a sniff, and then a small sip. She nods. “Yep. Truly awful.”

  
  
  


It does not take long for the truly awful space booze to do its job. By the time they get to swapping stories, each paladin draped in various states over the couches, they’re trying to outdo each other with tales of the worst injuries they sustained before they were ever a part of the universal war. Lance wins, but only just; Keith had snapped his ankle jumping off a roof, once, but one summer in middle school, Lance had flipped a jet ski trying to ride someone else’s wake and—it had not turned out well.

“Mistakes were made.”

“Pft, ‘mistakes were made,’” Keith repeats. “This is commiseration—not a political debate. At least I can admit I fell trying to do parkour like an inexperienced asshole.”

Lance sputters. “I was not inexperienced! I’d done that trick a hundred times over a million summer vacations!”

“Mmhm. And what happened to the Seadoo _that_ time?”

“What happened to _you_?” Pidge asks, looking a little pale. Well, more so than usual.

Lance just raises his chin and continues, “There may have been a concussion but that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”

  
  


Hours later, the conversation takes a decidedly adult turn.

“Am I remembering this right?” Hunk is asking, slowly. “That thing Coran said in that video—Keith, you remember the video!”

“Yes, Hunk, I remember the crappy video.”

“Didn’t he say skultrite has a use as a lubricant? I wondered for a long time if he meant like, commercial, machine lubricant, but everything I’ve worked with on this ship at least is hydrodynamic and I just can’t see how the crystalline structure of skultrite would have any kind of benefit. Must be some other kind of lubricant…”

“Welp, that’s my cue,” Pidge says, almost lightly.

Hunk makes a truly distressed noise and flails on his back, a little like a beached sea lion. “Don’t judge me, Pidge, I’m drunk.”

She’s still hopping off the couch like she’s not inebriated and starting toward the door.

“Aw, Pidge, don’t go. I’m sorry, I won’t talk about lube anymore-”

She doesn’t look back, but she waves a placating hand behind herself. “No worries, buddy. I just need to get some sleep or I’m not going to be able to keep my eyes open tomorrow.”

Then she does turn back, wobbles a little, and marches back to the table. She sets her cup back on the table, refills it, picks it up, and glares at them all as if she’s daring them to say anything about it as she backs out of the room.

“She probably just wants to drunk-hack,” Hunk concludes.

Standing up to refill his cup, Keith says, “Sure, man. You definitely didn’t scare away your science buddy.”

“Seriously. Who’s gonna translate drunk-Hunk now that Pidge’s tapped out?”

“Maybe no more of those five-syllable words,” Keith agrees, nodding.

Hunks folds in on himself, miserably. “Shut up, you guys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have obsessively watched seasons 3 - 7 and taken notes to see if I could make sense of the timelines and places. ~~Because I’m a hopeless scifi nerd and when the date/time/place placard comes up on a scifi show, I am always enchanted.~~ Not because I think anyone else is still nitpicking canon this intensely XD but because a lot of time passes in this show that we don’t see, at so many points. For example between s03e11 and s04e01, and even in that episode itself; months go by. And I’m obsessed with fic that fills in gaps in canon. I think Season 4 is particularly suited to fic like this… There’s just too much we don’t know.
> 
> Also in the grand tradition of [diasterisms's works](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11442951) I’m gonna indulge my sense of space-opera and link some outfits, like Allura’s [ wedding-cake of a gown](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h025mlCZsclwajSkuCtNcfGw49qLKC8y/view?usp=sharing)…


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loves a paladin party.
> 
> ~~also happy birthday Lance bb let’s get you laid~~

_07.28.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; Olkarion; Castle of Lions_

By rights, Keith and Lance should be wasted.

W a s t e d.

They’ve drunk the better part of the flask of the Truly Awful Space-Booze between the two of them. It’s at least 80-proof, if Keith doesn’t miss his guess. And if proof is a thing in alien alcohol. But unlike that high-proof shit you can get at the more authentic places in the desert in the American Southwest, this stuff doesn’t burn the roof of your mouth like paint-thinner. It doesn’t taste like a face-full of bartop or kitchen counter or not knowing _where_ exactly you are in the morning but certainly wishing you were dead.

Instead, the space-booze has taken them through tipsiness, past the point of no return, and then back again, to that happy-medium place of buzzed contemplation. Keith finds himself soothed, rather than irritated, as Lance talks. And talks. He hasn’t stopped talking, in fact, all evening: not since the paladins had started celebrating, when the lights of the lounge were still bright with early evening. It is Lance’s birthday, he had been sure to remind them—about seven or eight times—and it’s birthday privileges he’s operating under.

But Pidge and Hunk have since wandered off to bed. The cycle-lights are an eerie, blue-tinged glow. Lance’s rambling has turned color, too. He’s gone from tirades about Allura and her apparently endless legs to tirades about the war and their place in it. About his family, and his place in that, too.

Currently, Lance is correcting Keith’s impression that Lance is the baby of the family.

“Nah, three older siblings—Luis, Marco, and Veronica. But Rachel is ten months younger. My Irish twin.”

“Ah. So that’s how you manage it.”

Lance quirks an expressive eyebrow. “Manage what?”

“Being the annoying younger brother _and_ the middle child with a chip on his shoulder.”

Lance’s face collapses in a brief, inebriated frown. “Screw you, man. What would you know about it?”

Though Lance doesn’t sound like he means that—the insult implied, anyway—he does sound serious. About the topic, if nothing else.

That authenticity makes Keith want to keep sharing.

“You’re right, though,” Keith says. “I don’t know much about how siblings ought to act.”

Uncharacteristic silence greets this admission. Keith looks toward Lance. It’s like the pseudo-irritation was never there at all; he’s got this soft, patient expression on his face. In a tone that’s not-quite-joking, Lance says, “You do okay with us, though. Mostly. I’m gonna go ahead and speak for the team and say that we count, for learning how siblings should be. Brothers-in-arms, you know?”

“And sisters?”

Lance’s smile is the kind of self-depreciating that only the intoxicated can manage—pleased and cognizant about one’s own humanity, happy about how imperfect it is. “Sisters, obviously. Didn’t mean to leave Pidge or Allura out.”

Keith smiles back. But then he shrugs, self conscious. He knows he’s not going to stop himself from turning the conversation back to something earnest. He doesn’t want to be coddled; doesn’t want conciliatory words about the team-as-family when they both know very well that Keith doesn’t actually know what that means.

“You’re still right. I got placed out of too many families to ever see a sibling dynamic that worked. They tried, but…”As Keith trails off, he glances at Lance. When he sees the half-taken-aback look on Lance’s face— _god please don’t let it be_ pity—Keith adds, more lightly, “Guess they thought an only child would benefit from foster-siblings.”

Lance breathes out a laugh. It barely qualifies, but it’s enough for Keith to pretend that Lance has taken this as a joke. “But you don’t think you did.”

“Not even a little bit. I was, what, fourteen or fifteen, when they tried a group home for the first time. That went a little better. Should’ve just placed me by myself from the beginning. Probably.”

  
  


The more serious both of them get, the easier Keith finds it to want to share. Not extensively. But Keith has enough of a buzz in his blood to work past the natural introversion. To volunteer a little information of his own. Mostly about things Lance already knows: about the Blades; about when Keith and Shiro met; about what his dad did for a living.

But some other things.

  
  


Stories of their younger days bring them from family to sexually-charged over-sharing. Keith is going to blame Hunk for that. He vaguely remembers Hunk making _some_ comment earlier about alien lubricant… Anyway, Keith finds himself telling Lance about that awful first time getting stared down—and then felt up—by an extremely hot but much older guy at a party he definitely should not have been at.

“So you’re gay,” Lance not-quite-asks.

It’s meant to sound offhanded. But Keith can tell: there’s something more than idle curiosity there. That isn’t the only reason Keith tries to sound patient when he answers.

“Yeah.”

“Thought so. Though, in true Keith-fashion, it was one more thing I had to guess about you. Secretive little…”

Keith isn’t sure he’s meant to hear this last part; but he stays quiet, because Lance is obviously not done.

“Guess that’s pot calling the kettle black, though. Did- Uh.”

Lance’s voice goes very low as it trails off. He lifts his arm up to scratch the back of his neck.

Keith tries to wait, but he finds himself pressing.

“Something you want to share with the class?”

Lance clicks his tongue and shoots Keith a little glare. “As a matter of fact. I don’t think I’ve told any of you this actually, but I’m bi.”

That, Keith had only half-expected. The fact itself is not a surprise; but given the half-shy look on Lance’s face, Keith thought he was about to be subjected to some kind of inappropriate question about gay sex. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

“Are you?” Keith finds himself asking.

Lance nods. “I guess Hunk knows. But he’s the BFF, so…”

The idea rolls around Keith’s head. Slowly, like his brain is trying to savor it. God knows why; but he kind of enjoys the decadent roiling, the buzz accompanying it flickering in and out of existence.

It goes on a little too long.

Feeling the way he’s been holding his breath, Keith responds, “Huh. I guess no straight guy is actually so obsessed with his complexion that he does a weekly face mask, but… I swear I’ve only ever seen you hit on women.”

“That’s because guys are easy,” Lance counters, with a roll of his eyes. “If you’ve got a decent gaydar and can make eye contact, you don’t even have to hit on a guy.”

Keith finds himself wanting to laugh. Lance is not wrong, but he also doesn’t think Lance has nearly the experience he’s projecting.

Although, Keith doesn’t actually find the idea of Lance pursuing aliens of any gender all that implausible.

Maybe there _is_ more to Lance’s swagger than overcompensating.

“So…” Keith asks, “How is it we never notice when you wander off with hot guy-aliens?”

“Because it’s a lot more noticeable when you’re getting rejected by hot girl-aliens.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“…Have you ever actually hooked up with a guy?”

“That—that is pretty goddamn condescending,” Lance accuses, lifting his head up.

Keith hadn’t actually meant to _be_ condescending. He sits up straighter as Lance does the same. “No, I-”

“I don’t have to have done it to know.”

Lance is surprisingly clear. Despite the fact that he was supporting his face against the side of the couch until half a moment ago, now, he’s full of fire and conviction.

Something in the way Lance is looking at Keith makes Keith slow down and think.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m not questioning you… But. You’re curious, right?”

“Sure. I mean, yes!”

“So wouldn’t you like to?”

“Obviously!” Lance throws up his hands and turns this back on Keith. “What about _you_ , lone wolf? You can’t have dated anyone before we left Earth. Ever get any further than getting felt up at a college party, I wonder?”

Keith hates the way alcohol makes him go red. Asian flush, he always figured. He was already a little red just from the nature of this conversation. But now, he wonders if there isn’t something of his Galra heritage in the way his throat, his ears, his _entire_ upper body, goes scorching hot. Uncomfortably hot.

Lance raises his eyebrows, looking Keith up and down as if he’s filing that reaction away for later. Mercifully, he doesn’t say anything about it. He just waves a hand.

“So. I won’t speak for _you_ , I guess. But for me… There’s never been the right opportunity.”

“Or the right hot alien?”

Their banter is so well-ingrained in him that Keith only knows he’s spoken after he hears himself ask the question. In answer, Lance makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat.

“Must be the latter.” Trying to salvage his dignity, Keith continues, “Since you asked: you’re right. Even I can find the _opportunity_. ‘Lone wolf’ or not.”

Now Lance looks genuinely curious. “Since we got to space?”

“Uh…”

But Lance shakes his head, and he saves Keith from having to back up his bravado—or from having to humiliate himself by answering in the negative. “Tell you what, buddy, I have not been brave enough to get as far as hooking up with any aliens, yet. Of any flavor. I’ll go about as far as first base but then I get freaked out thinking about what kind of. Um. Equipment we’re dealing with.”

“...Ah.”

That is somewhat better. Keith’s not sure how, but it is.

And then Lance goes on, “I mean I guess it wouldn’t matter, really. Just, for now, I’ll stick with the parts I know.”

“…So basically you’ll make out with anyone, but that’s where you draw the line?” He shrugs. “Bisexual. Sure.”

Lance just flips him off. It’s not as effective as it might be were he not about three inches away and basically upside down. But he does it. He looks a little triumphant about it, even.

Then… he gets quiet. In fact, the quieter Lance gets, the more sober Keith starts to feel.

Lance’s head is just tipped over the side of the couch and his left leg is thrown up on its arm. Spread out like a cat, he seems more feline than human. Keith is just about to ask him why he doesn’t ever sit like a normal person when, instead, he decides that Lance looks quite comfy, draped like that.

That’s how Keith finds himself lying with his back on the floor and his feet kicked up onto the cushions of one of the couches. Lying next to Lance, copying his posture. But within seconds, Keith grunts, sitting up. _Trying_ to sit up. He finds that he’s still too buzzed to rise without black spots appearing in front of him.

“Ugh, how can you sit like this?”

From his perch, Lance shrugs. “Some of us are flexible, Keith.”

“Yeah well, no wonder your posture sucks.”

Lance doesn’t even make a quippy comeback.

It’s only in this silence that Keith knows: he’s stepped wrong here.

However that is—whatever “it” is, now— _it_ adds to the way Keith has been rubbing Lance the wrong way for weeks.

There’s been a _tone_ , lately. A dismissive, distancing sort of drawl has been creeping into Lance’s voice whenever he talks to Keith. It’s been pouring salt into the wound that is Keith’s longing for the way things had once been between them—before Shiro returned, before things got so busy with the Blade of Marmora, before they’d become the figureheads of a coalition and not a ragtag little group of rebels, each of them displaced in time and space but so tied to one another.

It’s Keith’s own fault, probably.

Keith is going to leave them. It’s inevitable. All this talk of belonging, of family—but Keith knows it for the temporary fix it is. He’d hoped the team would know, too. But he’s never been very good at telegraphing what he’s going to do when he needs someone else to pick up on it without him saying anything.

Now, he’s realizing, with a buzzed clarity, that he can’t expect them to know. Not with the little he’s been offering.

Sense of place isn’t temporary, for most people.

Keith has to start again.

He tries to trace the night back to the beginning. Back to the whole reason Lance had wanted them to get drunk together in the first place. But he can’t come up with anything clever. He can’t think of a way to turn back on the conversation, weaving earlier themes and jokes into something linguistically satisfying, the way Lance probably would.

So, Keith lays it out in no uncertain terms.

That’s the only way he knows how.

“…You know I don’t care whether you’re bi, or whatever. Hook up with as many aliens as you want. Or none. Makes no difference to me.”

Lance glances sideways at him. Sort of. Lance has been slipping down from his perch, so his head is down near the floor, and Keith is up on the couch, unwilling to subject his spine to the treatment Lance is giving his. So their eyes are nowhere near level.

Still, Keith tries to look him in the face when he asks, “I’m not judging you. I wouldn’t. You know that, right?”

“I don’t actually.” Lance looks down—well, up, at his shoes, the soles of which are still pointed toward the ceiling. “It’s really hard to tell with you, sometimes.”

Keith sighs, feeling how harsh it will sound before he can think to soften it. “I know. I’m… not great with the whole, talking to people thing.”

“Yeah communication is not your strongest trait.”

“Well. You’ve come to me to talk things out before, so I can’t be the absolute worst.”

“‘Not the worst’ is kind of a self-drag, you know, Keith.”

“Hey, ‘not the worst’ is ‘not the worst.’ For example, if I said you were ‘not the worst flirt I’d ever met in my life,’ it would basically be a compliment.”

Lance actually flushes at this definitely-not-a-compliment. It’s subtle, with his darker complexion. But Keith has seen him blush before: over a stupidly missed shot, over Allura, over other, much less dire things. So Keith can tell, even in the dark.

And it’s too ridiculous, so Keith continues.

“Except I _am_ saying that. You are not ‘not the worst flirt.’ You’re actually _the_ worst.”

Lance laughs, and it is very much at Keith’s expense. But he’s recovered, somewhat, so Keith’s okay with it.

Lance snorts, and says, “That doesn’t even make any sense…”

The silence they fall into is almost easy.

But then, Keith feels his eyes go wide.

“Oh no,” he breathes.

“What!?”

Keith doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches and then has to crawl a little along the floor, toward where he _knows_ he left at least one more sip of the space-booze in the little metal cup. It is, in fact, still almost halfway full. Sighing with relief, he grabs it. Stumbles. Then, he sits down next to where Lance is still sprawled out, half on the couch and half on the floor.

Very seriously, Keith says, “I’m just… Thinking about all the flirting I _know_ I’ve seen- Lance, please tell me you didn’t kiss Nyma before she handcuffed you to that tree.”

Lance takes a long time to answer. After several moments, he also sits up. Finds his own cup, which had been sitting almost empty next to Keith’s in the middle of the sunken couches. Lance has more dignity than to crawl apparently, because he stands up—well, stumbles up, to grab at the jar. It’s only got a splash or so left, so he grabs Hunk’s cup where he left it, and pours its remainder in his own.

“I- maybe did.”

Keith doesn’t wait for him to explain his answer. “I swear to god, Lance—“

“You just said it didn’t matter to you how many aliens I’d hooked up with—”

“—if we had to rescue your ass because you were too distracted trying to seduce someone from a species whose name you can’t even pronounce-”

“Hey, she was seducing _me_ , man,” Lance says, sitting down heavily next to him. “I don’t have to try that hard. Usually.”

Almost choking rather than laughing, Keith answers, “Uh-huh. Says the king of pickup lines.”

Lance waves a hand. “Yeah, but at the end of the day, a line is just a way to hook somebody in. After that you have to just… let your body do the rest of the talking.”

Keith snorts. He takes another drink. “Your body.”

“It’s true. You should know. Since you just told me you locked eyes with Hot Party Guy and had his hands in your pants like ten minutes later.”

“Not really what I wanted you to take away from that story, Lance.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “But you _get_ it. A look, or the way you move… That does a lot more to build sexual tension than anything _anyone_ can say.”

It should sound moronic. And it does, a little—but Keith also hears something of success, something cocksure and comfortable, in the way Lance says words like “sexual tension.” In the way he _looks_ while he says them. Right now, Lance’s body language is open, languid. His knees are spread wide, one bumping against Keith’s. Keith looks up into his face. He’s startled—and fascinated—to find Lance looking at him with an intensity he can only remember ever seeing once or twice, there.

Keith knows the way Lance expresses himself. Keith rarely sees Lance when they’re in their Lions; but he knows by sound, better than by sight, that Lance is more than capable of sobriety. His voice can go from pitchy and comical to low and grounded: not quite a growl, no, something steadier than that. He loses his usual, casual softness while they’re facing down the monster of the day: whether robeast, mall-cop, or Galra cruiser. But because they usual fight in their Lions, or with Lance strategically up in the rafters, Keith has had to imagine the way those sharp features and fine bones shift from the ridiculous straight to the sublime.

And the face Lance makes now seems battle-ready, somehow.

“Anyway. Earlier…” Lance murmurs. His determined expression falters—just for a second, while he swallows—and then he starts again, “Earlier, when you asked if I’d done it with a guy. You said, ‘Would you like to.’”

Squinting a little, Keith tries to remember. “…I guess?”

“Kinda sounded like an invitation.”

Keith laughs. Expects the end of the joke.

Instead, Lance angles his body toward Keith, one hand coming to rest on the cushion, just by Keith’s hip. The other comes to rest on his own knee. Hovers just near Keith’s.

Keith blinks.

Waits for a punchline that doesn’t come.

Feeling how very still he’s gone, Keith blinks again.

Shit, it’s one thing when Lance does this kind of thing with other people. But Keith doesn’t understand the _look_ that Lance is giving him right now. It’s gone past battle-ready, to some other kind of ready. Not over-the-top. Not expectant. Just…

Ready.

So maybe Keith does understand it, but… It’s out of context. It’s a look he’s only ever seen on other people’s faces, when directed at him. And sure, he’s seen it on this face—but it ought to be directing this look at someone else. At some other goal.

“Oh… my god, Lance. Are you coming onto me?”

Lance raises his eyebrows.

“Yes. You are.” Keith looks down. Watches where Lance is currently trailing one finger, lightly, over the top of Keith’s thigh. So he almost isn’t even sure he’s feeling rather than seeing the contact. From knee to hip. Then back down. Keith continues, inane and only half-aware. “That is what is happening right now. You are coming onto me.”

“Well your commentary isn’t exactly helping my game, but yeah, I’m trying to,” Lance answers, voice low and a little rough now. With frustration or something else?

Keith suddenly wants to know.

He looks at Lance. Lance looks at him. Keith isn’t sure he manages to totally banish the dumbfounded look he knows he’s been sporting; but he makes himself look directly into Lance’s eyes. He lets himself really look at all the colors, there. Sky blue, and soft, chalky blue, and liquid turquoise.

_Damn_ . This is why he doesn’t do this. He’s always thought Lance was pretty—a pretty little _bastard_ , over-cocky and more concerned by half with his beauty rituals than their training regime—but Keith also knows himself well enough to know that if he ever let himself really look, he’ll see something there worth staring at. High cheekbones. Defined features. Brows and nose and chin, definitively masculine, but almost delicate. Pretty eyes. Too many shades of blue.

And that’s not their dynamic.

Acknowledgement. Longing. Really _seeing_ each other.

Their dynamic is… bickering, and reassuring each other but only in dire circumstances. Having and then immediately forgetting Bonding Moments.

It is not… looking into each other’s eyes and finding something to long for.

That’s-

They lean in at the same time.

It’s crazy. Absolutely ridiculous.

But then one of Lance’s hands is tangled in Keith’s hair. And Keith is gasping, and pulling Lance down by the back of his neck.

And then their lips are pressed together.

  
  


Keith was right. It’s not just swagger. There is _earned_ confidence in Lance’s voice when he talks about… more than talking. Lance is a good kisser. Very good. And it surprises Keith to such a degree that he loses track of the moment and cedes the upper-hand to Lance. He lets Lance work Keith’s mouth open without all the awkwardness that parting someone else’s jaw usually entails. Their lips spread open against each other. Just the tips of their tongues, playing together at first, before Lance quickly tilts his head up, and licks at the roof of Keith’s mouth, and it has Keith leaning forward into Lance’s space—

—and he is _making out with Lance_ , oh my god-

“No?” Lance breathes, looking a little sad as Keith pulls away.

Keith takes a few deep breaths.

Lance’s hand rests, tracing along his thigh. Not pressing. Not pushing. But he’s definitely touching Keith. And his mouth is wet, where he’d just licked all the way past every one of Keith’s defenses.

They’re drunk.

Again, with how much they’ve drunk, they should both be under the table.

But again, the more real they’ve gotten, the less effect the space-alcohol seems to have had. At any rate, neither of them are so bombed that Keith is going to let them do this here, in the middle of a common area, like sloppy teenagers. Midnight glow limning the space in peaceful, forgiving darkness or not.

Keith’s not so drunk that it stops him from standing up, looking this undeniably beautiful boy in the eye, and whispering, “Not no. Not tonight.”

He holds out his hand for Lance to take. Lance, looking only slightly shell-shocked, accepts it, letting Keith pull, him up off the couch. They both stumble, a little. Lance is heavier than he looks under that jacket; Keith has sparred with him enough to know that.

“For tonight, only, though…?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Keith grumbles. But he guides them both toward the bay doors and then down the right hallway, toward Keith’s room.

Later, Keith won’t really remember how they get into his bed. Or out of their clothes.

He will remember what seems like acres of smooth, brown skin. Will remember running his hands _all over_ that. He’ll remember more making out; he’ll demand more of Lance’s kisses than is strictly proper, for a tipsy one-night-stand. He’ll have little bruises on his lower back and at the jut of his hipbone, from where Lance digs his fingers in. His ears will burn when he remembers the way Lance moans, high-pitched and not-at-all in control, when Keith tells him to lend him a hand and make himself useful. He’ll hear his own involuntary breath, echoing with memory, at the feel of Lance: hot to the touch, delicate skin but steel underneath.

He’ll remember, with a flush of shame at his own embarrassing openness, that once it’s dark and quiet and they’re both sated, he’ll say, “Happy birthday, Lance. Don’t think I said it yet.”

And he’ll hear Lance’s smile even in the pitch-black.

“Thanks, Keith.”


	3. Chapter 3

_08.03.2115_

_Quadrant Omega-Radar-6; CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

It’s a bad week.

Keith’s days and nights are one fuck-up after another: Voltron-related mistakes and Blade-related mistakes and being-a-human— _half-human_ —related mistakes—

And it’s saying something that _this_ is a bad week. Because last week, Keith had drunkenly hooked up with his right-hand man. His professed rival. His one-time- _vehemently_ professed rival. Alone in his own bed, the morning after, he’d processed the revelation and stared into the morning-bright lights lining the room. The UV-infused rays attempting to stimulate a circadian rhythm that has long since gone to shit.

And Keith had known: that was not the only mistake he was about to make.

Today, he’s staring down the barrel of another, _much_ bigger mistake: It’s the second time he’s tried to save a teammate on a mission with the Blade of Marmora.

He goes back to save Regris—for the second time—and _not_ because his fellow, tailed half-Galra holds the key to the mission. And this time, he has no mission-related excuse for why he breaks protocol.

Keith doesn’t even get very far in the attempt. He turns around, tries to shift his weight past Kolivan’s rock-solid forearm, and then watches as the cockpit shatters apart where Regris is still madly typing away—

— _in a way that reminds Keith of… of Pidge, or of the way Coran will sometimes get lost on a wild hair, typing away and into the castleship’s deep archives_ —

It’s a stupid risk. Keith knows it for a stupid risk the second he does it. Suddenly being spun out in space, untethered, is indication enough: his planning sucks. He ought to rethink every decision in his life that has led him—more than one—to this, nauseous, gravity-less struggle.

Because the whole being-spun-out-into-space thing has happened to Keith a few times, already. It’s why his favorite parts of his Marmora training have included exercises in zero-G, with _and_ without jetpacks. Now, at least, Keith knows what the fuck to do when he’s in this situation, scrambling desperately between blown bits of a spaceship in which, only seconds ago, he’d been standing and anchored by artificial gravity.

But _then_ —

Then he scrambles his way out. Or in, rather. Sights the craft and reads that it’s air-tight through the unknowable technology of his mask. Finds gravity, and an escape. Lands and crouches on the escape pod floor, panting with the futile effort.

Dispassionate, Kolivan looks down at Keith. Who, God, has not only gotten himself blown into space (again) but saved nobody.

The emptiness of it is punishment enough.

But even as he and Kolivan go about hotwiring the pod into usability, Keith knows his own self-recriminations aren’t going to cut it. He knows the silent treatment will be far from the worst of it. Kolivan oftentimes lets Keith pilot, after a successful mission. Not this time. Kolivan seats himself in the cockpit and punches in their coordinates. Only then does he finally let his visor down. His face is stoic against the streaks of stars they cut through, stony as always, but with a definite tightening around the mouth.

Keith really wants to say, “ _I’m sorry_.”

But he doesn’t say anything.

It’s not just because he’s afraid. He’s definitely afraid, and thinks he has reason to be. There’s a cold, familiar feeling of trouble that creeps up his ribs one by one and sets a heavy weight in his chest, gets heavier in his throat. Knowing that feeling, and the futility of trying to explain himself, he knows words won’t help.

Hell, his apologies are starting not to be enough for Voltron. _Team Voltron_ : the only weaponized group in the universe that is one group hug away from being an episode of Sesame Street. The Blade of Marmora is more like a group of warrior ought to be. Its legacy is sacrifice, and war: _millennia_ of both. Saying he’s sorry for ignoring an order he’s already disobeyed once before—which, this time, nearly got Kolivan, never mind himself, killed—is not going to be enough for his transgression, not this time.

The first time he’d almost gotten himself killed on a mission with the Blades, he came away with a datachip full of reasons for going against orders. That chip was the only reason, he’s sure, Kolivan let him stay. And given the smart-mouthed way he’d talked to Kolivan, after, even that reason shouldn’t have been enough.

But that’s always been Keith’s pattern, hasn’t it? Reckless choice. Defensive rationale. Consequences landing where they will. Only then does he know if anyone’s still on his side.

_A discipline case, indeed._

This time, Keith’s got nothing. Not even self-defense. He has empty hands and a pathetic rationale: sentiment.

But the Blades won’t let him stew in that emptiness. It’s not their way. First, they don’t have time to let anyone stew in anything. They have to move on. Now. Second, things like forgiveness, consequences for their own sake, compassion and the freedom to learn from the errors of your own ways: these are the lessons of an after-school special. Not of a stealth-based paramilitary organization older than any secret society on earth. Older than any _civilization_ on earth.

These things are nowhere in the look Kolivan gives Keith, once they get back to the safehouse.

Keith meets his superior’s eyes for as long as he can before he glances away, already tearing up.

It is _so_ humiliating. Keith isn’t really a crier; despite all the discouraging, heartbreaking things that have happened to him since they got into space—and that he’s had to watch happen to his fellow paladins, since they got into space—he doesn’t think he’s actually cried in all that time. He’s seen Hunk cry, and Lance, more than once. Pidge, too, every so often. He has absolutely no judgment for other people who express emotion that way. But it’s never brought _him_ anything other than trouble.

One time— _only_ one time—he’d gotten so frustrated at the Garrison that he’d cried. Not even hard enough that tears fell. Just moisture beading up under his lashes, when all the tricks he knew weren’t enough to stop them from forming. Not after Shiro left, and his flight simulator scores continued to be better than anyone else’s but they didn’t like his _attitude_ and so nothing he did could quite make up for it. Biting down on one side of his tongue and then the other, clenching various muscle groups one at a time; none of it helped, and he’d teared up. He’d _cried_ in front of a good half of his class, and they had been _merciless_.

And even before that—among foster kids, you can’t afford a reputation as the one that can be brought to tears. The system ends up sucking the pitiful ones up in red tape and ever-shifting violence.

Now, Keith does feel pitiful. He’s crushed under the precise weight of how powerless he is. But he accepts reality. The life he couldn’t save. Shouldn’t even have tried to save.

And that’s where these tears come from.

They don’t fall. Keith makes sure they don’t.

“You know what’s going to happen?” Kolivan asks, resignation in every word.

Keith nods.

He doesn’t. Not exactly, but it hardly matters. He may not know, but he accepts.

This is not like when he’d finally gone too far at the Garrison. He vividly remembers that day; his last words to the last commanding officer he’d ever spoken to were, “Can’t expel me if I quit, you fucking assholes.”

But not now. He’s not going to quit. He’s not even going to swear. He’s _certainly_ not going to cry. He’s going to stand here and take it, whatever _it_ is.

But with that revelation, he feels helpless, insides turning watery. Rushed and wishing they’d get on with it, already. He knows there aren’t many steps between a warning (which he’s already had, after the first time he’s gone to save Regris) and expulsion. Which can’t be what he’s in for. They can’t kill him. Or even get rid of him some other way, liability that he’s rapidly becoming. He’s the Black Paladin of Voltron. That status is the entire reason he’s still standing here in one piece.

So, he figures he’s in for some manner of pain.

When he goes with the faceless Blades whose names he doesn’t even know, he more than figures. He feels what he’s in for, in their gloved fingers’ iron-tight grip on his arms. He lets them take him.

It’s not the first time he’ll have gotten hurt at a Blades installation. It’s not even the first time he’ll have let the Blades inflict pain on him on purpose. He almost _died_ , during the Trials, though he doesn’t really remember how serious it got, then. He only knew that he kept thinking, “Never let them see you sweat,” and hated the fact that when one particularly vicious blow had severed his right trapezius from his deltoid, he’d let out such a pitiful sound. Regular Blades training, too, has its own consistent risks. The martial techniques Keith learns are unlike any way he’s ever asked his body to move, before.

Standing out even more vivid than that, among the ways he’s gotten hurt among the Blades, are the odd test raids. Keith had woken up to a flooding barracks, one time, and now he sleeps even more lightly than he ever has. And that’s saying something. To make sure they can withstand being captured, interrogated, tortured, even, a Blade’s life depends on being able to deal with paradigm shifts, with cataclysm, at any moment.

This one brews like a desert monsoon.

It’s cold, wherever they are. He’s not sure what planet they’re on—it _is_ a planet, not an asteroid, which is unusual—but whatever type of base it is, it’s a permanent enough setup that some things are fixed in place. That includes the armory. At its far end, there’s an inconspicuous set of metal bars placed about eight feet off the ground. Well above his head, and far enough apart that even someone of standard male Galra height wouldn’t be able to twist, much, spread out over their width.

He’s stripped to the waist. Each of his wrists is done up in a secure tie.

It’s that first, surprising hit of lightning during a storm. A crack, a fissure across the sky. Even when you know it’s coming, you’re never quite sure you see that first strike, particularly when it comes before the thunder.

Keith bites his lip bloody after that, trying not to express everything he lets them inflict on him: each crack of what he doesn’t see but can only assume is some kind of whip. But he knows this is serious. And how serious. It would be insulting to pretend he’s not suffering. So he lets himself make a few noises: earnest, and regretful, the pain of all of it soaring out of him and into the ears of everyone listening.

Truth be told, there aren’t all that many there to witness. The Blade of Marmora doesn’t really advertise this aspect of things, even if everyone knows how deadly serious a matter of discipline becomes, and how quickly.

If the pain and the audience and the fact that they’re doing this to him at all doesn’t tell him he’s on thin ice with the Blade already, nothing will. So he lets this be what it is. And, pride and humiliation be damned, he strings the shattered sound of his penance into something the rest of them will believe.

It’s a warning, still.

Kolivan tells Keith, in no uncertain terms, that there won’t be another.

Or, rather, there will be, but not for him. If Keith does this again, they’re going to hurt whoever he saves. He doesn’t know if they’re serious or not, or if this is just one more instance of the consistent psychological game-playing necessary in a spy collective.

Regardless, Keith almost throws up.

He has a chance to tend to his wounds. More welts than cuts, he’s surprised to find, but then it makes sense that if they have to move on, this kind of thing can’t be done in a way that inflicts injury serious enough to require recuperating. It still hurts like a motherfucker. And there’s still a little bit of blood. Keith has the brief, poetic thought, about that bit of blood, bright against his skin, and how no one here has been easy on Keith, no matter what secret is in that substance. Certainly, all the blood between them doesn’t feel like a warning, anymore. It feels like life and death.

The way it’s supposed to feel.

Kolivan leads the briefing to discuss the mission. There are no formal debriefing spaces, no long tables to sit at and hash out what they’ve gained, what they’ve lost, and what their next move will be. But even as the Blades at this facility gather around the projected holoscreens, there is no question that Kolivan is sitting at the head of the metaphorical table. Regardless, and regardless of the way Keith tries to hang back rather than crowd their leader’s space like he usually does, Kolivan is not the only one who notices how shaken Keith is.

_Not because of the beating._

_Maybe a little bit because of the beating._

Keith can feel that his limbs keep shaking. He tries to disguise it with exaggerated fidgeting. His eyes keep darting away from any kind of focus, and he hides that, too—or tries to—with a tired blink, or a forced yawn.

The decision is made quickly. Kolivan tells Keith to get his head on straight, if he wants to keep working with the Blades. But he also insists that Keith do some much-needed reconnoitering with Team Voltron. And he gives him a timeframe.

Two movements.

Two weeks, essentially, before Keith will part from them, for good.

So.

After Keith fails to save Regris—after he shows the Blades exactly the kind of soldier he is—after he decides that he can’t keep his loyalties divided—he’s back in the Castle of Lions for a few weeks with some specific objectives.

Gather information. But don’t get involved.

Separate.

Verb form: separate.

Keith has another mission. He’s known for weeks that he’s going to leave Team Voltron; he just didn’t know what it would be that would trigger the separation. He certainly didn’t think the trigger would be as abrupt, or as physical. But he’d had some sense knocked into him; he can’t keep doing this. He knows that, now. He can’t be in two head-spaces if he’s going to go on the months-long mission to find the new quintessence.

That’s why he tells Allura that he’s not in the mood for a lecture. He knows what’s she’s going to say before she can say it. He’s come to every conclusion she can lay at his feet.

Anyway, he knows he deserves worse—and he’s already had it.

He’s surprised at the way Allura’s blatant disappointment, and her _knowledge_ , can still sting so much. _And how does she know what happened on the mission already? Guess rumors spread the way they do in any other group of people, shit_ —

“The Marmora can go on without you. They have for thousands of years. Voltron cannot. We cannot.”

And then she walks away.

Allura doesn’t hint at anything in particular. Not about _what_ happened. Only that she heard the end-result of the mission. But if she knew _all_ of it, Keith has a feeling she’d be crowding him into a healing pod right now, or at least the medbay, and she doesn’t try to crowd him anywhere.

Keith absolutely does not want to tell _anyone_ what happened, but as he makes his way back to his room, he comes across Shiro next. Of course he does. So he gives Shiro a barebones account of the mission that turned out to be nothing more than a decoy and of the aftermath, in which it’s been decided that Keith needs to reconnect with what’s going on with the Coalition, needs to be a direct line of information from Voltron to the Blades.

Shiro nods, considering. “What is the point in having the Black Paladin working with the Blade of Marmora if he doesn’t occasionally lead Voltron’s missions?”

Keith breathes out, looking down. “Kolivan said as much. In so many words.”

It’s what Keith doesn’t say that seems to resonate with Shiro. That, or the thousand-yard stare Keith can feel he’s sporting right now. Whatever prompts it, Shiro gently reaches out with his Galra hand and clamps it over Keith’s shoulder.

“I know better than most people what it’s like to be out of favor with the brass,” Shiro says.

Keith actually scoffs at him. “Sure, says the Garrison’s Golden Boy-”

Shiro gives a sardonic smile, digging his fingers in against Keith’s upper back—and he clearly doesn’t miss the way Keith gasps in surprise, half-flinching away from him, nostrils flaring. Neither does he question Keith about it.

But he does raise one eyebrow as he continues, “When you’re the favorite, and you mess up, people tend to take it pretty personally. But you’re only human.”

“Mostly,” Keith grits through his teeth, trying not to react any further to the still-unrelenting pressure of Shiro’s fingers. How Shiro doesn’t notice, frankly, is a little alarming. He knows Keith so well. Shouldn’t he sense what’s happening? Shouldn’t he ask?

But he just goes on, relentless and optimistic. “You can surprise their expectations even once they realize that.”

With his jaw so tight, Keith doesn’t quite manage the self-depreciating smile he tries for—Lance is way better at that kind of thing—but after whatever quirked expression he manages, Shiro squeezes him once more, smiles, and lets him go.

Keith looks away, lets out the breath he was holding, and pretends that trying to meet everyone’s expectations is all that’s going on.

***

///

***

_08.07.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; Olkarion; refugee base_

Of course Lance sees Keith in the crowd as they pass around medical supplies like Big Damn Heroes.

Lance is Team Voltron’s sharpshooter. If he can’t spot a familiar figure in space-ninja black in a sea of desert-washed beige, they should all seriously despair about their ability to survive beyond the week.

Still, no one else says anything about it.

So he’s glad, when he gets to talk to Allura about it, the next morning.

Well, if the middle of the night following about three hours of sleep can be classified as morning. They’re sitting under the castleship kitchen’s cycle-dim lights, chatting about the war effort and how it means they never have time to eat meals together anymore. Even their sleep cycles tend to be different, now. Exhibit A: Allura and Lance are up before dawn because they have a duel mission. (Fire and ice missions, they’ve taken to calling them. Or, at least, Lance is trying to make that a thing). Hunk, Pidge, and Shiro are trying to get some rest before the whole-Voltron mission that they’re set to embark upon later in the morning.

Lance and Allura chat quietly, almost half-heartedly, over their not-quite-breakfast. Not only because Lance is still groggy, his morning-voice still croaky. Certainly isn’t enough time for morning self-care rituals, these days. But more than that, Lance has a feeling they only speak that way, between sips of cold soup, because both of them have something important to say, and it’s easier to say the things that don’t matter all that much.

But Allura, who’s more steady than anyone, is no less steady, no less brave, in this moment.

“In some ways, we’re stronger than ever. More powerful, more connected,” she says. She looks down, at where her thumbs are running along the rim of her bowl, still mostly full. “In others…”

Lance wants to be brave enough to finish her sentence.

“I saw Keith in the crowd, yesterday,” Allura adds. “Outside one of the cargo ships.”

It should seem random. But it isn’t. Because Lance knows, had the he courage to finish her earlier sentence, he would have said, “ _In other ways, it seems like we’re more alone than ever_.”

Swallowing around his cowardice, he manages a half-interested hum. He feels bad, immediately, and more inadequate than ever. Not just because she deserves more from him than this, but also because Keith is one of theirs and he should sound like he cares more than this. (He does; but he also doesn’t want to go into that. Not right now, when everything’s so up in the air.)

(And not with her. Preferably never, with her.)

Allura notices the way he responds. Of course she does.

She goes on, “I know that you two haven’t always been friends.” Lance shouldn’t be surprised—isn’t surprised, really—that she goes there. It does surprise him, however, when she leans forward and squeezes his wrist. That gesture shocks him enough that he looks up at her.

He swallows, again. “That’s… one way of putting it.”

Lance is not going to blush.

Nope.

(And if he does, it’ll hopefully be too dark for her to see it.)

“But I have to say,” Allura continues, sitting back. She’s got this little, contemplative smile on her face, one that definitely should not be as devastating and confusing as it is. “I think you two are the ones who have changed the most, through all of this. You’ve both worked so hard to find your respective places. And along the way, I think you, in particular, have come to an understanding of Keith that you couldn’t have had, if you hadn’t once been so antagonistic.”

“Tch,” he offers. He’s sure Allura knows how false it sounds. “Yeah, like anyone can understand what’s going on underneath that mullet.”

She doesn’t let him distract her from her earnestness. She never does admit distraction. Lance has always been glad for that. Smiling, knowing, she forges on, “You were the first among us to accept Keith as the Black Paladin. You’ve always supported him as his right hand. So I can understand you may be more disappointed with the way things are going than any of us.”

This is too much.

Lance wants to pretend she’s right. That it’s just disappointment he’s been stewing in. That the day before, Keith was there and gone so quickly, Allura was the only one who saw him.

But Lance saw him, alright.

And it’s _not_ just disappointment. Not by a long shot.

Lance is head over heels for the girl sitting next to him. Has been ever since she first tumbled directly into his arms on the day they’d all stumbled into the Castle of Lions. But she’s so far out of his league, he’s had to turn his affections elsewhere. He doesn’t feel guilty about that, not really.

But there’s just something about looking her in the face and knowing that while she’s trying to be sympathetic, she doesn’t know just how close to home she is. She doesn’t know (quiznak, he hopes nobody knows) how important it is to Lance to have Keith on the team. It’s always been important. First, because of everything Allura had been referring to: he had been so determined to show everyone—to prove to himself—that he was the better pilot, the better soldier, the better man. But somewhere along the way, he’d had to admit that Keith had become a lynchpin, for Lance.

It’s not just they need Keith to win. Of course, they’d never have been able to complete a single mission on a Galra cruiser without Keith’s Galra heritage. But it’s also the fact that they’d never have found Blue at all, but for Keith. Lance may have been the one to pilot her first; but he’d never have been able to pilot for Voltron, at all, had it not been for Keith.

He’s so entwined into all of it, the Galra, the war, their weird and mystical, fated paths…

_That’s_ why Lance is Keith’s righthand man.

It’s… destiny.

Sure, it took processing to get there. Took swallowing a lot of his own pride. But, he realizes, it really hadn’t taken that long seeing Keith as the Black Paladin for him to step into a supportive role that felt comfortable, instead of complicated. This dynamic _works_ for them. That’s why every move Keith makes thrills or confuses or hurts.

And that hurt _could be so much worse_.

It _would_ be far more painful, were he in love with Keith. And if Lance weren’t such a quiznaking coward… He thinks he might be. Might have been. In love with Keith.

He can’t tell Allura all of that, obviously.

Or let himself think it, really.

But there’s only so much Lance can lie about at one time.

Allura has gone back to sipping her soup. Lance opens his mouth, again. He starts softly, and unsure about what he even wants to say, when he speaks into the chrome-lit dark.

“Actually, I-”

He apparently startles her.

She tilts her bowl too far. A little blue-colored foodstuff spills over onto the stark white of her uniform.

“S-sorry!” Lance says, reaching around the table for a napkin.

“No!” she answers, looking down at the mess. “My fault entirely.”

“Should’ve waited until you were finished-”

“-thought you were angry with me. I wasn’t going to say anything else.”

“Allura, no,” Lance says. He finds a napkin under a stray plate. He’s about to lean over to try to help, but thinks better of it, and just passes her the napkin. She takes it with a little grin, one that vanishes quickly. “Why would I be mad at you?”

She doesn’t answer, directly. Instead, as she goes about cleaning herself up, she says, quietly, “What was it you were going to say?”

“Oh. Uh, that actually I saw him, too. Yesterday. Keith, I mean.”

“Oh?” Allura says, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Yeah,” Lance confirms, looking down. Allura is struggling to clean up with just the one thin napkin, so Lance starts fishing around for a second one. “Well I mean, Kolivan was with him. And he’s kinda hard to miss.”

Allura nods, crumpling the dirty napkin and setting it over her bowl and the last bit of food she’s clearly not going to eat. It’s not unusual; though dang, how does she keep up that muscle mass without a more regular protein fix? “Head and shoulders taller than anyone else on this planet, even with the diversity of the refugees.”

This startles a laugh from Lance as he’s reaching for another napkin—cloth this time, he didn’t even know they _had_ cloth napkins—and handing it to Allura. “That and he walked between Keith and the rest of us like he was… I dunno, cutting Keith off from us on purpose, or something.”

Allura gives him a look, seeming to consider him. Or at least his inane babbling.

“I shouldn’t have assumed I was the only one,” she says, softly. _Contrite_ , even. Lance’s spine straightens a little. Is she taking him seriously? “Your situational awareness has always been the best of all the paladins.”

She _is_ taking him seriously. He blinks at her. Normally he’d be preening at a compliment like that, particularly from her. But right now, it doesn’t feel like it’s earned.

“Thanks…”

Yeah, he’s the team sharpshooter. But it’s not like Keith was acting like he was trying to avoid being seen. _And_ Keith had been staring, meeting Allura’s eyes. Even if he wouldn’t meet anyone else’s. Least of all Lance’s.

At the time, Lance had smiled at the refugees crowded into their growing wartime shelter and pretended he hadn’t seen him.

Now, he offers Allura a tight smile, and pretends that’s all he was going to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main reason I wanted to write this story was to see if I could fit a klance hookup into canon.
> 
> The other primary reason was that I love Season 4, Episode 1. There is so much time that goes by, and so much development. I get why the show kind of fast-forwarded through it, because it's not necessarily development you need in order to move the war forward. But there are significant emotional journeys that I think we only got snapshots of and that wasn’t enough for me. Particularly with regard to where Keith is at. ~~for example the way Kolivan looks at Keith after the decoy ship always gave me a Bad FeelingTM hence the first part of the chapter, sorry Keith~~
> 
> Next chapter is more smut, less pining.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up’d the rating cuz it’s no longer fade-to-black >:)

_08.07.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; Olkarion; Castle of Lions_

_Something_ is going to happen.

Keith knows it all the way down to the marrow of his bones. He sees it in the way, for several cycles after he misses the Reiphod show of arms, Lance looks _past_ Keith and not at him. There is some unfinished… something, that is going to happen between him and Lance. He’s not sure if it’s a fistfight or a screaming match or something else entirely. But it’s coming, and it has to happen before Keith passes the leadership of Voltron back to Shiro.

Keith only ever goes to the kitchens anymore after the cycle-lights are dark. But he mistimes it, this once. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance’s conversation echoes through the doorway. Keith isn’t paying enough attention to stop himself as he catches the tail end of their strategizing, or commiserating, or team-bonding, whatever it is they’ll continue to do without him—

They all look up and lock eyes when Keith halts to avoid running into them. The three of them are not as used to moving in the shadows. It takes Pidge, her face all but pressed against a datapad she’s holding in front of her, almost running into him to get them to stop. Lance reaches for her automatically, turning her to the side to avoid the collision. Hunk stands in the background, making contained, futile hand gestures.

But Keith moves, before he even knows what he’s doing.

Keith can feel, hand palm-out against Lance’s bicep, that the current Red Paladin lets himself be stopped. Keith can also feel that Lance is not exactly happy about it. In the least inquisitive way Keith has ever heard anyone say that word, Lance says, “What.” The “t” is hard, the vowel a low rumble of sound.

“Lance,” Hunk says. And it must be some kind of admonishment, because Lance’s shoulders rise up.

“I didn’t say anything,” Lance says, petulant.

“Exactly.”

Lance exhales, shortly, like he has more to say but has been asked not to. Or like he’s decided himself that he just isn’t going to bother.

Under her breath, Pidge adds, “None of us have said anything to each other for days even though we’ve been pulling missions like crazy…”

Hunk makes an acknowledging noise. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then looks up at Keith with purpose. “Keith. We heard what happened with the decoy ship.”

Keith opens his mouth. Does “classified” not mean anything? Damn—but then realizes that Allura probably told them about Regris. He’d thought, when she’d said that she heard what happened, that somehow the secrets of the Blade of Marmora were spilling out casually into the wider Coalition; but that’s not been the case. And he’s been listening; no one else on Olkarion is talking about Blade business. Allura is the only one, to his knowledge, who knows that they lost a member in Omega-Radar-6.

_How_ she knows is another matter entirely.

“Allura told us,” Pidge confirms. Taking in the data points of Keith’s surprise and then his acceptance, her expression is as calculating as always. But it’s not without compassion.

Then Hunk continues, “We’re sorry, man.”

Hunk doesn’t have to do any of this. But he does, because he is kind, even if this is the first word he’s said to Keith in weeks. He’s a better teammate than anyone deserves—let alone a leader who’s actively trying to pass that mantle on to someone who wears it better.

“I’m the one who should be saying that,” Keith answers. “I keep missing Voltron missions.”

Hunk shakes his head. “Well, this time you had a good reason. I don’t even want to think about what it would be like to lose one of you guys. Let alone to have that happen and then try to show up to what’s basically a parade. I don’t think I could handle that…”

Keith is absolutely not going to cry. But the loss and its aftermath are awfully fresh, to be acknowledged out loud like that. He breathes in, sharp, and his fingers tighten where he’s rested them against Lance’s arm. Only then does he realize he’s _still touching Lance and Lance hasn’t moved,_ even if he’s still pouting like a child.

Then, Lance covers Keith’s hand with his own and lifts it—not unkindly, but enough that he can step back and turn his head toward Hunk and Pidge.

“Can you guys give us a minute?” Lance asks them.

So. It’ll be Lance who breaks, first.

Maybe it happens because Keith has broken something in Lance. His trust, if not—

Well. His trust, certainly.

Pidge’s eyes are wide as saucers, suddenly, beneath her glasses. She nods, and blinks, and Hunk gives this squished, sideways little smile, pleased and exasperated all at once.

“If you need a referee, you know where I sleep.”

“You got it, bud,” Lance chuckles.

Hunk gives him a thumbs up, as he steers a still-slightly-shellshocked Pidge toward the paladins’ rooms.

Lance looks after them until well after they’ve turned the corner. When he finally looks toward Keith again—not at, but toward—the corners of his mouth are turned with a disappointment edged in hope. It’s always hope, and possibility, on this team. It makes Keith think of what more it could be without him.

Continuing not to look at him, still, Lance says, “You said you were gonna be there.”

“I know.”

“But you weren’t.” Lance’s voice is so matter-of-fact, Keith isn’t sure whether he’s being scolded or whether Lance is going to turn it around like he so often has in the past and offer Keith a way back in.

And he wants that; he wants it so badly, to be the one who’s worthy of the second chance. But he isn’t. Shiro is the one who deserves this kind of unwavering support—and not only because Shiro’s own second chance wouldn’t be of his choosing. He didn’t choose to be kidnapped, and memory-wiped, and whatever else has happened to him in the interim. He never chose another objective over Voltron.

Keith is the one who keeps messing up, and leaving people behind, again and again.

There’s no reason to try to defend himself. Under his breath, Keith answers, “…I know.”

“But like Hunk said… you had a good reason,” Lance says—like he’s not sure he believes that.

Keith shrugs. “Even so. I know it’s not the first time.”

_Won’t be the last, either_.

Lance sighs. He lifts one hand and rubs at the back of his neck, hard. “Man, you sound so miserable I can’t even be mad at you, you know?”

But he still looks mad.

_I know I’m messing all of this up_ , Keith wants to say. _I know that you four deserve better. Voltron deserves better. But nobody_ listened _to me when I tried to tell you that. Shiro didn’t listen to me. You certainly didn’t listen to me. You just believed in me, like…_

“I’m guessing you didn’t get anything to eat, yet, today?” Lance asks.

This throws Keith. He blinks. “Uh. No, I was…”

Lance is already turning back towards the kitchen door and moving so it slides open. “Hunk made something that is the closest thing to blue box I have had since I turned twelve, I swear to god, and it would be an absolute travesty if all us earthlings didn’t get to eat some.”

Lance turns back to Keith, who has halted in the doorway with what he’s sure is a stupid look on this face. Frowning, Lance adds, “Please tell me you know what I mean when I say blue box.”

Keith can’t drive the stupid look off his face, but he is able to answer, “There were years of my life where I basically lived off that shit, so, yes, I know what blue box is.”

Lance grins.

They sit. They talk. Keith feels like they fit months of conversation into the ten minutes it takes him to stuff his face full of what is definitely the closest thing to shitty boxed mac and cheese that Keith has had since he came into space.

It’s glorious.

Until Lance has to go ruin it with his sincerity.

Keith should know. Usually that’s his job—ruining things with sincerity.

Unlike Keith, Lance has the grace to look embarrassed when he says, “I’m glad we’re talking. I wasn’t sure we had anything else to say to each other, but that’s kind of a stupid way to think about our team, isn’t it? Whatever happens, we’ll move on. Right?”

Keith nods. Lance just sits there, with all that easy belief, allowing Keith his reverent silence.

Eventually, Lance shrugs, and says, “If I can give you a good enough reason to _keep_ talking…” He gives Keith a half-smile. “You know I have another bottle of that Olkari alcohol.”

Keith feels his own eyes go wide. “…That might be a start.”

They go back to Lance’s room.

Keith makes them take a detour to his own room—“If I’m gonna pass out on your floor I at least want to do it in comfortable clothes”—before they head back to Lance’s and drink more of the Truly Awful Space-Booze. They definitely don’t drink as much as they did the first time. But it makes them just as reckless as the first time.

Keith wonders many things about that recklessness. Maybe there’s a bit of an aphrodisiac quality about it? Maybe it’s not the booze at all but something about the way he and Lance have always pressed each other’s buttons. Isn’t there some law of attraction? The more of something there is, the more likely it is to attract even more of the same? Whether liquor, it’s science, or new age bullshit, either way, it seems to be true:

All the other mistakes that have been crowding into Keith’s life attract even more mistakes.

This is one of them.

Possibly, he and Lance would have gotten under each others’ skin like this regardless of what was going on around them. But Keith has so many things to blame: and he will. Keith is going to blame the booze. He’s going to blame the law of attraction. He’s going to blame the fact that he’d rather be drunk and turned on than in pain. The past few days with Voltron have been nothing _but_ pain; and at that, the pain of separation and of divided loyalties has been so much worse than the still-lingering feeling that he’s had his back flayed open.

Lance is scrubbing a hand through his hair helplessly, and he starts saying things like, “I don’t even know if I’m trying to change your mind, man, I just-”

Keith gives in.

He slides in the chair, the desk chair he’d pulled over so he could sit across from Lance at a respectable distance. He hadn’t sat on the bed; he’d wanted to be an adult about all of this. He’d wanted to look at least one of his teammates in the face and tell them what he’s planning, to plant the seeds of distance.

Keith has never been very good with growing things, however. He’d killed every last succulent left in the desert shack.

Instead, Keith rises from his seat and plants his knees on either side of Lance’s hips and shoves him back against the bed. He plants his elbows on either side of Lance’s head and proceeds to kiss him absolutely stupid.

Unfortunately, it’s just as good as it was the first night. Lance is so _responsive_ , and his skin is soft under Keith’s mouth, and he seems to know all the right places to rest his hands: at the small of Keith’s back, and just above his knee where it cages against Lance’s hip. And then one hand, Keith couldn’t even tell you which, fists itself in the hair at the back of Keith’s neck and pulls, so their lips slide apart, wet and messy.

“Fuck,” Lance drawls.

And he swears so rarely that the shock makes Keith let out the pathetic noise. He’s been conveniently lodging all his other noises against the damp places inside Lance’s mouth. This one is so raw and exposed that he feels himself start to blush.

When he catches his breath, Keith asks, “You gonna make good on that threat, or…?”

“Not a threat,” Lance says, with a threatening smile. “You gonna be good and roll over for me?”

Keith laughs, even as Lance tightens his grip in Keith’s hair. “Fuck you.”

“Think it’s gonna be the other way around, sweetheart,” Lance breathes.

Keith doesn’t disagree.

But—

There’s this look of absolute devastation on Lance’s face, when Lance asks about a condom and Keith tells him he doesn’t have one.

“Well have _you_ been able to find anything like that, _any_ where we’ve been?” Keith asks, hearing and regretting how high and vulnerable his voice goes. He still feels himself flushing even as Lance shakes his head and drops his hands to his sides.

“Haven’t really looked, to be honest.”

Keith is annoyed by how cute Lance looks with his brown hair all spread out on the too-white bedding. So he turns away, reaching into the back pocket of his black jeans. “Found this though. Luckily. I have no idea if this is what it’s _actually_ for but an, um. Uh… _someone_ we know… assures me it’s body-safe. And I think she’s a more reliable source than your space-bootlegger.”

Usually his muscle memory serves him better than this. He fumbles. But ultimately, he’s able to grab the little bottle of slick. Lance looks almost wary when Keith looks back down at him.

“What?” Keith asks.

After a moment, Lance shakes his head—quickly, as if trying to clear it. “First of all, is that what you grabbed from your room?” Lance doesn’t even stop talking long enough for the blush to travel all the way up Keith’s face when he adds, “I mean I knew- I thought you were grabbing- well, what you already told me you don’t have.”

“Well obviously I wasn’t,” Keith says in a rush, embarrassed, suddenly, that they both knew exactly what they were about when they left the kitchen.

Lance kind of smiles up at him, sheepish and pleased at the same time. And it’s too adorable, so Keith rubs his hands over his eyes and grunts, “You said first of all.”

“Huh?”

Keith lifts his hand up so he can look down at Lance, who is still looking up at him in that effortless way. He explains, “First of all, I was obviously not grabbing condoms. So what’s the second of all?”

Swallowing, Lance sets his hands on the tops of Keith’s thighs and says, “Second of all… you don’t mind?”

“Mind what?”

Lance is now officially redder than Keith. Good; Lance is the one who blushes, between the two of them. It might be more obvious on Keith, but Lance is the one who goes red over even stupid little things. Now, he gets even redder when he asks, “Do you mind, i-if we don’t use…?”

“…No?” Keith raises an eyebrow. He has just enough time to wonder whether this expression is anywhere close to as expressive as it is when Lance does it—whether it truly captures the depths of his exasperation.

Then, slowly, the dots connect.

“Oh. Uh, if you’re worried about-” Keith backpedals. For a minute, he’s angry with himself for getting this carried away without even thinking of the logistics. It’s been a long time since he’s been that careless. “I mean I know they blood test everyone at the Garrison, so I’m guessing you’d know about anything. My last test was clean, and then it was just me and the desert so not much opportunity…”

Keith only slows down when he sees that Lance is just… breathing and shaking his head. Finally, he lowers his gaze and lets out a weird little scoffing sound.

“I’m not worried. Just-” He cuts himself off and _definitely_ doesn’t say what he originally set out to. “So did you find the lube at the space mall, or what?”

Keith laughs. He thinks of how much easier it is to _let_ Lance make him laugh when they’re both intoxicated. “No. The idea of seeking out the space-mall-sex-shop when all the rest of you were there, too, was a little brazen even for me.”

“Yeah, under all those fluorescent lights…”

Keith shifts over Lance’s lap, then, grinding himself down with impatience.

“You’re wearing too many clothes to make any of this relevant,” Keith says. To make himself clear, he reaches for the back of his own t-shirt’s collar and yanks it off over his head, tossing it in the center of the room.

Undressing is awkward—hell, that space between talking and sex is always awkward, which is why Keith usually prefers to skip it altogether.

But there is one move Keith has that he’s actually proud of.

Setting that little bottle to the side, while Lance is still trying to kick off his pants where he’s pinned under Keith, Keith takes the elastic from around his wrist and ties up his hair—not too much of it, but enough that if he winds up on his back it won’t be a bird’s nest. He watches how Lance stares at him as he does it, at the muscle shifting over arms and chest. The way he exposes the angles of his jaw, his neck. The way his movements send them rubbing bare against each other.

Keith lets him stare.

Then, he pops the bottle’s cap open with his teeth and thrills at the way the little click draws Lance’s attention back up to his eyes. He holds them, their gazes level with each other, as he slicks his fingers up and wraps them around Lance’s cock, again.

Lance grits his teeth. “Somebody knows what he wants.”

“Mm. I know I want you to use more of this than you think you have to.”

— _because_ this? _Is not like messy, drunken handjobs. Or hooking up with a woman, you useless straight boy_ , he adds privately—a little mean and knowing it.

Admittedly, he’s nervous about doing this—with Lance, sure, but also with someone who’s admitted that he has no experience having sex with other men. But Keith still passes the bottle to Lance firmly as he moves his own hands under himself, two of his fingers spreading slick. He isn’t willing to risk this part. He knows exactly the kind of stretch he needs and knows how to get there: quickly, but without injury.

“I think I can figure that much out without your help,” Lance finally says.

“Whatever. At least you can be taught…”

Keith closes his eyes and breathes out when he breeches himself, letting it turn into a purr—unapologetic—when the unmistakable sounds of a slick fist over a cock hits him. Hearing Lance slick himself up, Keith grins. It’s not just the anticipation set off by the familiar, wet sounds; it’s the little whines Lance starts letting out. Keith stops trying to be subtle about how good he’s feeling already, just two fingers in.

Lance is trembling a little, now. Keith gets it; he could get lost in the mutual self-pleasure, too, but…

It had been fun, when they’d hooked up the first time. The easy, uncomplicated slide of spit and skin and just enough friction. They’d used hands and lips and tongues. Lance had been clever with all of them—more than Keith thought he would’ve been, given what he’d said about his relative lack of experience with guys.

Tonight, Keith can hear it in the sounds they’re both making:

They intend to say yes to everything.

“Can’t believe I didn’t have you like this the first time,” Keith says.

He hates himself, a little, for how earnest that sounds. He hates himself a less less when, _nothing_ but earnestness, Lance answers, “Yeah?”

“Mm…” Keith slides his free hand down his own body and then continuing over Lance’s. “Such a waste.”

Lance nods. “All that time,” he adds.

But they waste no time, now.

He unwinds from Lance a little, raising himself up on his knees. He ensures he’s been thorough enough with his prep before he attends to Lance, trailing his fingers over the head of his dick to make sure that he has, in fact, spread enough slick around to make this good for the both of them.

“Okay,” Keith says, nodding, and reaching firmly for Lance.

Lance doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands as Keith takes him in. They hover at his sides before they land, softly, on Keith’s back. Keith only barely notices them wandering, aimless over heated skin, as he accustoms himself to the stretch after more than a year of nothing: nothing but the emptiness of space. But soon he’s able to sit, fully, and just as he feels Lance’s hands come to grip each of his hips, thumbs pressed in tight against the bone. The grip pulls him forward, a little, and Keith lets out a soft groan. He listens for an answering sound from his partner. But he hears only careful breathing.

Keith notices that his eyes are closed, so he opens them, softly, looking down to take in the sight of them locked together. It’s not the best view, but still enough to confirm: they are doing this. This is happening. He’s actually got Lance’s cock _inside_ of him.

He looks up. Lance’s eyes are pressed closed, still, and his eyebrows are pinched together like he’s trying really hard to… keep still? Keep the noise in?

Keep something to himself, at any rate, and that does not work for Keith _at all_.

Keith wants to know what Lance is thinking-feeling- _being_ —

More than that: he wants to crack him open.

“Lance.”

Keith knows exactly how powerful it can be when someone says your name like that. With that soft, questioning tone, while taking someone inside yourself, you can flip someone’s magnetic poles. With a soft smile, you can put them right again.

So he only grins a little at the overwhelmed look on Lance’s face, as Keith does just that. When he meets his eyes, Keith leans forward and slowly presses their mouths together. Lance gives Keith his tongue almost immediately. Keith takes it and sucks on it, and he is more than pleased when he feels Lance start to shift under him. Groaning into Keith’s mouth, Lance is unsteady and wrecked and perfect.

But then Keith pulls back. Blinks. Steadies his gaze on Lance’s face.

“…Are you crying?”

“Shut the hell up,” Lance says, taking his hands away from Keith’s hips to wipe over his face.

“It’s alright,” Keith says. He’s honestly not sure if he’s being condescending or if he’s trying to help. Either way, it’s a reflex. This is _them_. He has to give Lance shit. Has to. But he also has to help the hopeless bastard out.

Keith isn’t sure what to make of Lance’s face. He can see that while, no, Lance isn’t crying, he certainly is shaking, sweat pricking his temples, and his eyes are overly glassy.

“I know,” Lance finally says. He tries to sound pissy, Keith can tell, but it ends up more like a whine. “Everything’s fine. You’re… It’s a lot, okay? Feels…”

It takes all of Lance’s slurred words and ragged breathing for Keith to put it together. As he does, he feels himself smirking. He ducks, pushing his face against Lance’s throat to cover it, and he inhales the combat-familiar smell of his sweat. He breathes him in, clenches around his cock, takes in what he’s realized. There’s a new twist to Keith’s arousal. He licks his way up one of the straining tendons of Lance’s neck until his mouth is right under Lance’s ear.

Lance shudders with absolutely no subtlety.

And Keith goads him.

“You’ve never actually fucked _anyone_ before, have you?”

Lance shifts, suddenly, like he wants to get away. But it only brings them closer together. Keith doesn’t bother to quiet the way he moans. He does pull back a little. Because this is too good. And he wants to look Lance in the face when he demands, “Have you?”

Lance, unsurprisingly, can’t look at him. “Not… technically?”

Oh, this is more than good. It’s a glorious disaster.

Keith rolls forward against Lance, exaggerating his gasp. Though, he doesn’t need to exaggerate all that much. Because with each new roll of his hips, each carefully placed word, he allows himself to breathe, lets himself get off on the way Lance flushes harder and harder.

“Lance… Loverboy… _Sharpshooter_ McClain… Was a virgin until I got here.”

“I didn’t say that…”

But there’s a desperation in Lance’s voice at a couple of those epithets. So Keith continues.

“Heh. With the way you kissed I thought you had experience—but with the way you’ve always acted…”

“Keith, ungh, it was a technicality.”

“Have you had your dick in anyone else or not?”

“N- ye- Shut _up_.”

“That’s a no.” He shoves Lance, pushing him flat onto the bed and planting both hands on Lance’s chest. He keeps rolling his hips, pushing with the heels of his palms for leverage. The way Lance’s hands come up to grab at his wrists is, honestly, adorable. Endearing. But the spark they’ve had kindling between them for _so long_ is finally igniting and Keith isn’t about to let this fuel go to waste. The higher he can rile them both up, the better this is going to be.

The half-smirk on Lance’s face tells Keith that this is the right move. “You think you know me so well.”

“I do,” Keith says, before he rocks forward, hard and confident. “I know it’s infuriating you, that you’re the less experienced one.”

Lance groans, the arousal in it outweighing the embarrassment. “Don’t psychoanalyze me while we’re having sex. Rude.”

Keith ignores him. “I know that I’m the one on top right now. When you’re ostensibly topping.”

Lance manages, “Still.”

“Still what? You’re still doing me? At this point you’re kinda just laying there.”

“Ohmy _god_ , would you stop talking?”

Keith rewards him for the banter with another hard roll of his hips. “Stop telling me to-” He lets out a ragged breath, feeling himself go limp and loose, feeling Lance sink into him. He relaxes his jaw, feels the way he goes slack down the rest of his body, too. “I’ll say whatever I want, when I’ve got you like this.”

And it’s as Keith hoped. He’s being a little sappy, a little self-indulgent, a little slutty. But it drives them both higher. Lance breathes, hard, and bends his legs. He uses the leverage that creates to rock up into Keith. This new angle drives a harsh groan out of Keith, and he parts with it like he’s unwilling. But the rough sound is exactly what they both need to let each other know that Lance is doing things right.

“I’ll do the same,” Lance says, a little flippant and high on Keith’s sounds, no doubt. “Say whatever I want.” His next thrust upward almost jostles Keith off of him, but he grips on tight to Keith’s hips and drives forward into him like it’s his job. “Hn -t‘s only fair.”

Keith—well. He tries to say “good,” but instead, he just nods, as the way they start to rock together jams his voice back inside his body.

It’s hot as hell. But it is not easy, or graceful. Not at first. Keith has enough of his mind left to be disappointed in himself for a minute or two; he can’t quite find the angle he wants, and he can’t quite match Lance, who is still obviously trying to fuck the absolute hell out of Keith but also to… get used to the whole experience.

But at this point, each of them has known the other’s body in too many new situations. It doesn’t take them much longer than those first few minutes to find their rhythm.

Once Keith leans back, he lets his body move how it likes. His hands leave Lance’s chest and end up just behind him, on Lance’s knees. He pushes back, at the same time he lets Lance grab his hips and drag him forward. And _oh_ —this way, he can feel that long cock inside him reach just the right place. So he cants his hips downward, speeding up on the thrust and then slowing down on the withdrawal, hearing exactly how crazy it’s driving the boy under him. Once, he pulls almost all the way off Lance, only to rock down with twice the force he’s used so far. It hurts a little—but not a hurt that will last, and more than worth the immediate effect. He almost chokes on the sensation, the direct prostate stimulation. Like there’s a straight, molten line shooting from the core of him up his spine and into his throat.

So he does it again.

And if Lance’s eyes could roll any further back into his head, he’d probably knock himself out.

“Nothing else to say, Sharpshooter?”

Lance’s punched-out gasp at that nickname—Keith heard it right the first time—makes Keith think he’s won. He promises them both that this is going to be the last of the shit-talking before he shuts up, himself, and rides Lance within an inch of his life.

But before that…

Lance lifts his head off the bunched-up sheets. He looks at Keith so intensely that Keith wonders if maybe Lance has been playing up how drunk he is.

Lance is still blushing, the scant few freckles he has left after so long out of the sunlight standing out against his complexion. His eyes are still a little glassy. But they are an electric blue under the lights threading along the borders of his bunk.

Slowly, he tightens his grasps on Keith’s hips. “I’ll show you sharpshooting.”

_That’s_ a little silly—and Keith is about to say so when Lance uses his grip to flip them around. Keith ends up on his stomach. He reacts by instinct, his upper body going slack only to move as if to roll onto his right shoulder, out from under the body over his.

But apparently Lance has been practicing. And it feels… necessary, like _relief_ , when Lance’s forearm comes across Keith’s upper back, exactly like he’s pinning him against the ground on the training deck, and he says, “Stay down.”

“Like _hell_ -”

Keith’s laugh becomes a wet gasp against his own sheets, while Lance fills him back up. This is not graceful, either, and if he weren’t so fucking gone for it he would tell Lance to slow down. But he just swallows the pain—the metallic rush of _toomuch_ , _toofast_ , _god_ if he bites his lip any harder there’s going to be blood—and lets Lance fuck him from behind. It’s been _way_ too long since Keith has done this to be going _at_ it, but…

Timing doesn’t matter. Not even a little bit. All he wants to do, pinned under Lance on the bed, is find some way to get more of it, to push back harder.

So it’s perfect, what Lance does next. He eases off, but only to grasp at Keith’s hips again. This not only lets Lance pull Keith backward into every thrust; it lets Keith raise his torso off the bed for leverage.

“Aah, shit,” Keith manages, toes starting to curl as they find their rhythm again.

“Jesus,” Lance says, in seeming agreement. “I can see everything like this. Didn’t know you had a tattoo here.”

He brushes his thumb over Keith’s right hip as he says this, so innocently that for a moment Keith forgets to be shy about it. But then, he thinks how it must look to Lance, especially from that angle. It’s off to the side but could _certainly_ be classified as a tramp stamp: the inky product of running with an older, inappropriate crowd: of being offered, and accepting, something that was definitely not aspirin. He’s amazed when all Lance does is run his fingers over the ink again, then up his back, the pads of his fingers digging into the musculature. And he doesn’t give Keith any more shit.

In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all for the next several moments.

Then he leans forward a little, and Keith can feel him breathe out, harshly, cooling the sweat over Keith’s back. “You’re so- hah- you feel fucking incredible.”

Keith grits his teeth at the compliment, reaching one hand between his belly and the mattress so he can get a hand around his own dick.

“J- just shut up and fuck me right.”

Lance grumbles, sounds like he’s going to complain. But he just shifts his grip again, and the way he yanks Keith back onto his dick only serves to showcase his frustration. “You’re the one who said we say what we want, here.”

Still, Lance does as Keith asks. The rush of blood in Keith’s ears is _loud_ as he lets him. It’s not perfect, but it’s so much, and it’s so them, and Lance is so eager for it, for him—so clearly enthusiastic about making it good for Keith, that it undoes him anyway. Lance doesn’t even have to ask if he’s got it right as he settles against that _exact_ spot inside that causes Keith to twitch and fist at his own cock. The added stimulation sends him clenching around Lance, who lets out a strangled sort of noise. He half-pins Keith again, that wandering hand pressing into the middle of his spine. Keith bites the inside of his cheek; Lance is pressing down against brand-new scars, and Lance is crowding up against Keith and Keith’s not _alone_ and it’s _exactly_ what he needs to give up the remainder of the fight. He lets the adrenaline, the alcohol, the arousal—the soft, helpless “ah” that Lance offers and that he echoes—take him over.

Keith’s orgasm crests. He half-shouts, but he muffles it against the bed. Lance is already going to have a big enough ego about the way all this went down—again—Keith knows, without Keith being so noisy about it.

But Lance isn’t done. He sits back, bringing Keith with him, still inside him. He seems to remember his own pleasure at that point, and he asks, in a shaky voice, “Keith… can I…?”

Keith just nods, pressing his face against a cool spot in the sheets. “Go ahead.”

Instead of pounding into him at his own pace, as Keith assumes any man would do when given this opportunity, Lance grips Keith hard by the waist and starts to pull out. Keith winces, then lets out a pathetic moan—relief, loss, he doesn’t know what—as the head of Lance’s cock eases past his rim. But then he hears an unmistakable, quick shift of skin-on-skin, feels an unmistakable wetness against his skin, warm even as it starts to pool at the dip of his spine.

It stops him cold.

He hears Lance breathe. He hears himself say, “You didn’t have to do that.”

Lance stops breathing.

“S-sorry, I thought-”

It sounds guilty—and Keith doesn’t like that, doesn’t… until he realizes Lance thinks Keith means—

“Oh.” He turns his head, and he can see Lance now but just in profile. “No, I mean- pulling out. You didn’t have to.”

“…Oh. Uh, okay. Well…”

Lance pants the words out, surprise and even shock etched into the soft line of his lower lip, parted from his upper. Then he sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Keith watches him. He doesn’t bother getting up from where he’s collapsed onto his stomach against Lance’s bed, head cradled on his forearms. Lance puts his own head in his hands, his elbows against his knees.

“So that happened again,” he says. It’s so quiet, Keith isn’t sure whether he’s meant to hear it at all.

He doesn’t know what to say this time any more than he knew what to say the last time. Last time, the night of Lance’s birthday, Keith had woken up from a half-doze and watched Lance quietly pad his way out of Keith’s room.

This time, Keith rests his forehead against his forearm, and says, “Maybe we just don’t say anything.”

Lance exhales what sounds almost like a laugh. “Not what we agreed on. We said we’d say-”

Keith is tired, and sated, and spent, but he still hates the way Lance closes his lips over his own teeth and makes himself stop talking.

“What did we say?” Keith manages. It sounds sleepy, and distant, even to his own ears.

Lance sighs. “…Nevermind. It’s fine. We just won’t say anything.”

“Okay,” Keith says, apropos of nothing.

_Okay_.

_It’s fine._

_What did we agree on, again…?_

***

They don’t say anything else about it.

Not about the fact that they’ve been hooking up for over a week, while Keith recuperates and reconnoiters for the Blades and tries to be the Black Paladin. Not about the fact that, after the second not-accidental-drunken-hookup, Keith crawls into Lance’s bed in the middle of the night without even sending an incoming data-ping or knocking on his door. Nor do they say anything about the fact that Lance does the same to Keith the next night—probably because, if Lance could sneak his way into Keith’s bed without waking him up, that would mean they were even.

So. They were even.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not saying I wrote this scene and then wrote thousands of words of setup to justify its existence. 
> 
> …But I kinda wrote this scene and then constructed a 40k, ten-chapter fic that then became an epic 4-part series to justify its existence.


	5. Chapter 5

_08.17.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

Three dots. Three dashes. Three dots, again.

Morse code for S.O.S.

The comm-chip in Keith’s vambrace vibrates, the distress signal burning against his wrist, feeling like needles and not like the gentle buzz of electronics. But it’s too late. He’s missed the two-movement mark. If he’d gotten this signal a couple hours ago, when the Blade ship was still orbiting Olkarion, this wouldn’t be a problem.

But timing is the biggest problem Keith has had since coming to space.

Keith wasn’t able to leave the team. He’s been trying for weeks to convince Shiro to take a shot piloting the Black Lion, but he hasn’t had any luck. With no certain Black Paladin, the team would be at even greater risk than Keith has already put them. He can’t exactly abandon Team Voltron when he doesn’t know that the team will be able to form their namesake.

Neither can Keith join the team, now. Despite the S.O.S. going off like a siren against his skin, he hasn’t had any luck getting Kolivan to turn the ship around so that he can answer the distress call from the Castle of Lions. If he wants to do anything about it, his only option is to steal a pod.

Then again, as he recalls a public defender telling him at some point, it isn’t theft if you have the intention to give something back…

And he does intend to bring the pod back. He intends to go help Voltron, and then come back here for whatever missions still remain to be assigned in the quadrant. Kolivan had said there were more than a few, before they start on their long infiltration mission.

He just has to—

The blow comes like a bullet to the back. He loses his breath and goes sprawling, just barely managing to catch himself on his forearms so he doesn’t break a wrist or an elbow.

“Nice try, Earthling.”

Keith growls, getting to his feet. In the space it takes for him to do so, the masked Blade blocks his view into the escape pod’s hanger. Keith doesn’t know her name; but she’s an immovable force between him and the source of his divided loyalties. She’s a head taller than him and half over again as broad across the shoulders. He knows trying to force his way passed her will have no effect.

He does it, anyway.

“I’m getting a distress call from Shiro _as we speak_.”

“Kolivan has given instruction that you aren’t to leave the ship,” she says, sounding as if the effort of holding him back is no effort at all.

“On what grounds? I’m not even assigned right now, let me _go_ -”

“If you do manage to get past me, Keith, you won’t be coming back.”

Shoving himself back from her, Keith looks up to where her eyes should be. She lets down her mask, to his surprise. One of the other half-Galra assigned to Kolivan’s unit, she’s got over-sharp features that are a little too close to human for comfort. Her hair, dark blue and wild against smooth purple skin, spills away from her caul. She looks kind of like an avenging angel, Keith thinks, stupidly. But she’s also got something like sympathy on her face. At least Keith thinks it’s sympathy; sometimes, with the Galra—more furry and mammalian than the beings he’s usually spending time with—it’s hard to tell what a certain arrangement of features means.

Keith has no questions about the self-righteous smirk this Galra sends his way.

“Backing down, are we? Good choice. I’d hate to have to thrash you again.”

Keith swallows without meaning to. She’s not talking about the way she just took him down in the corridor. She doesn’t have to clarify what she’s talking about; Keith never knew which of the Blades carried out his sentence after the decoy ship, and he didn’t exactly want to know. The fact that she says anything about it at all is a flex, he knows, and unfortunately, it works.

Making himself ignore the way he can feel he’s flushing red—anger, embarrassment, annoyance—he says, “I told Kolivan then that I agreed I’d step down as the Black Paladin. I don’t have any intention of going back own my word.”

“You do, clearly,” she says, one heavy eyebrow raised. “You were given a timeframe in which to step down: two movements. You had them.”

“It- that mission took longer than I thought it would, I…”

“Without limits, the Blade of Marmora would have splintered long ago. Being true to your word means being true to the letter, not just the spirit, of the word you give.”

Keith blinks at her, something sick and trembling building inside him.

_No_ , says the not-so-quiet voice in his head that’s always tried to find its way through every loophole—or just drive down the wall, when that isn’t an opinion. _No; this can’t be how it ends_. With the choice taken away from him? Even if Shiro does manage to reconnect with Black, it will have been Keith who took away his choice. Who put the whole team _in extremis_ , gambling on Shiro’s goodness and his strength with Keith’s absence.

The distress signal drives its tattoo into his wrist, one final time.

“The woman who once owned the Blade you wield,” his comrade says, unrelenting. She nods toward his belt, where his knife has rested against his lower back for as long as he’s been able to hide it, there. From teachers; from Garrison officers; from the team, once that purple glow started looking too close for comfort to the signature color of their enemy. “If she’s still alive, she’ll be in deep cover. A secret supply line, like the one we’re heading for, would be the most likely place.”

Keith squints up at her. “The most likely place for what?”

Her head tilts, patient. “To learn of your family, of course.”

Reeling, Keith feels like she’s hit him again—only, now, somewhere internal, somewhere soft and vulnerable. None of the Blades has ever said a word about the person who used to own the Blade Keith carries. That’s not why he’s here, anyway. He doesn’t need to know; and if it were actually important information, Keith is sure Kolivan would have said something.

But is this woman saying…?

It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter; he already told Shiro that after his Trials. “Knowledge or death” may be the motto of the Blade of Marmora, but Keith doesn’t need to know the secrets of his alien heritage.

Keith finds himself snarling, “I know everything I need to know about the only family I have left.”

He turns from the Blade in front of him and starts running toward the bridge.

One more try.

His steps slow by the time he reaches the corridor outside the bridge. He isn’t even running anymore when he reaches its bay doors. Feeling like he’s moving through sand, he sets his hand on the control panel, takes a few steps toward the ship’s main control panel, and stops.

Speaking to the back of a looming figure limned in purple light, Keith says, “I _have_ to be on this mission, Kolivan.”

Kolivan nods but doesn’t look at him. “So you’ve said.”

“Lotor is my mess to clean up,” Keith explains—not really knowing why he’s doing so. But if he’s going to abandon his team, his family, for this group of strangers, this masked, faceless band, he wants to give a reason. “His trans-reality ships might rival Voltron for strength. What he was able to do to the Lions those months ago was proof of that.”

Kolivan doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He does look back at Keith, finally, gaze steady. Eventually, he takes a breath. “These are the reasons you’ve already given, Keith. No one is doubting your sincerity, or your motive. But it has to be your choice.”

“Are we… Is it starting now?”

Again, his superior nods.

Keith isn’t owed this explanation, but he can’t help but angle for it, anyway. “I guess I didn’t realize.”

“So you’ve said,” Kolivan repeats.

Keith kind of wants to hit something. He kind of wants to be childish, and insubordinate, and blame something, _anything_ else—something other than his pride, and his weakness—for what he’s about to do.

Instead, he says, “So I’ll stay.”

Kolivan hums, considering. “You should probably tell Voltron, yourself. I thought that’s what you were going to do with all that time I gave you, already.”

Keith’s blood rushes through him. Confused, irate—mostly at himself—he can’t even think of how to defend against the charge, true as it is.

“We’ll turn about, so you can finish what you started,” Kolivan continues. Convenient timing, Keith thinks; the S.O.S. at his wrist has stopped vibrating. Keith just hopes to god it’s because Shiro found another way. “They deserve at least that much from you.”

Keith literally bites his tongue on what he wants to say—“ _They deserve way more than that_ ”—but stands silent.

***

///

***

_08.17.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; Olkarion; Castle of Lions_

“Do you realize your absence put the team in jeopardy?”

“And not just the team- the refugees as well!”

Lance’s tone is even shriller than usual, but he can’t help it. As Allura confronts Keith, and the rest of the team stands in a united front on the bridge—looking downright mean, if Lance is honest; and judging by the absolutely pathetic look on Keith’s face, Keith thinks so, too—Lance can’t help but add something. He wants to back Allura up. He wants to _shake_ Keith, so he’s less steady than Lance, for once.

He wants their team to go back to how it goddamn _was_ but that’s clearly not going to happen.

There are a million forces working on all of them, in this war. And these are way stronger than gravity. Duty, and obligation to the innocent. Voltron has a Coalition to lead. The rebels have an infrastructure to set up. Having missed the rescue of the convoy of medical supply ships that form the backbone of the Coalition supply routes they’ve been killing themselves (sometimes literally) trying to establish, Keith is suddenly one more force pulling them away from their objectives rather than pushing forward.

There are forces working on him, too. The Blades have a Galra heir to find. Keith has a Blade-allied mother somewhere, out there, to find. And these shadowy concerns are pulling Keith away from the spotlight where Voltron needs to be.

Lance hopes what he adds about the refugees, about bigger picture, sounds like something a Paladin of Voltron should say: defending those who don’t have a voice to defend themselves, all of that.

He knows, however, that the way he accuses Keith of being the thoughtless one is in fact deeply, deeply selfish.

Lance is furious, disappointed, and a little embarrassed. Keith is standing there in his Marmorite armor, so far from him—from them, so near the door, so much like he’s ready to run at any second: the way he’s been running for weeks, if not months. And Lance says what he says because he wants to look bigger than all the petty, true reasons he’s practically trembling, looking at Keith as he tells Team Voltron he’s leaving.

But.

Finally, _finally_ , Keith explains. He uses his words. And like all Lance’s ugly thoughts where Keith is concerned, this one melts like chocolate in the warmth of their group hug.

He knows there’s an overly fond look on his face. So he asks, “Who am I gonna make fun of?”

Even he doesn’t believe that’s what he means.

What he means is:

_Who else’s skin am I going get under?_

_Who else can I tear down and build up in the same breath?_

_Who will I make a hero out of, next, when I barely believe_ I _can take the next step?_

Frankly, Lance may talk a lot of shit. But that’s all it is. Keith always _reacts_ to what Lance says, both for good and for bad; that’s why it’s so much fun to get a rise out of him. And at the end of the day, he hadn’t made fun of Keith when he’d had his most prime opportunity. You can get right to the heart of someone’s weaknesses when you share a bed with them; but Lance had never even tried. He knows where his loyalties lie.

***

///

***

_08.23.2115_

_CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

Keith had never realized just how cold it is in space, until being placed on this mission.

The assigned Blade squadron stops landing planetside, requiring constant maneuverability. Keith had known this would be the case. But he had not been prepared for the way camping out with Voltron for two weeks had allowed the warmth of _home_ to seep into his bones, nor the way the constant movement from ship to escape pod to secret base and back would drain that warmth right back out of him.

He should be used to that. To moving house, at least. Before Olkarion, Voltron hadn’t exactly had a home base since Arus.

Hell, moving was basically his first career. He’d been shifted from distant cousin to family friend, even when his dad was still alive and needed someone to watch him when he was off fighting fires. And after he’d died, it was more of the same. The State doesn’t exactly concern itself with making sure troubled foster kids sleep in the same bed more than a few months in a row. His file wasn’t likely to cross anyone’s desk as long as some concerned neighbor didn’t make a middle-of-the-night call to CPS over a “family disturbance,” as long as he was in a placement where he wasn’t running away. But they did call. And he did run. Often. Usually there was a good reason; but it always ended up the same way: with a caseworker professionally trained to tell kids that this time, it would be fine, and with the cool unfamiliarity of stranger’s faces.

Keith thought he knew cold. But the kind of cold he knew—the cold of barely being in a place long enough to learn the scent of the sheets, of government facilities and desert nights spent in isolation—is not the same as the lingering, insidious cold between galactic orbits.

Nowhere near the same.

***

///

***

_08.23.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; Olkarion; Castle of Lions_

“So what was with that look on Keith’s face right before he left?”

“What look?”

“I dunno, that look like…” Lance literally flails for the rights words. He’s always talked with his hands, but physicality is not helping him now. The translator implant in his ear—the one that comes standard with a Garrison acceptance, but which Coran had had to fiddle with to allow the paladins to understand the less… language-y of alien languages—is not helping him, now.

As ever, Hunk tries to help. “Did Keith give _you_ some kind of look? Like a mean one? I can’t promise I’d be able to kick his ass but for you, I’d try.”

Lance smiles without meaning to and looks down, shaking his head. “Not me, specifically, it just looked like… like he didn’t want us to let him leave.”

Hunk gives Lance a sidelong look through the steam rising from the stove. Lance catches it in his peripheral vision. Hunk looks annoyed; but it’s probably because he really wants to tell Lance to get down off the counter and knows that it won’t do any good. Lance is the champion of sitting in inappropriate places. A kitchen counter, among the components and the smells and the action of dinner coming together, is too promising a place to pass up.

With abundant patience, Hunk responds, “I don’t know, Lance. If he felt that way, you’d know better than anyone.”

Lance scoffs. “What?”

“You’re kind of our Keith-translator.”

“Uuuh, even if that were true, this time I really don’t know.”

“Then why don’t you ask him?”

Recovered, Lance rolls his eyes. “It’s too late anyway. Even if I tried to data-ping now, it wouldn’t reach him.”

Hunk shrugs. “I guess not.”

“The Blades can contact us whenever they want but there are so many protocols for incoming messages… Keith tried to explain it once but I swear he sounds like you and Pidge when he gets talking about Galra-stuff.”

Hunk nods. “Makes sense.”

“I could ask Pidge to try to help me get a signal out, I guess, but she’s off trying to find her brother…”

Hunk shakes his head, stirring what he says is going to resemble stir-fry when they’re done. He gets distracted on his second pass to the left, glaring ineffectually at a pile of unchopped veggies. He said he might not use them because he wasn’t sure how the ones already in the frying pan were going to cook up, but now it looks like he’s having second thoughts. “So ask Keith next time we see him.”

“Which will be when, exactly? We don’t know when that mission he was talking about will be over.”

“Then it kinda sounds you’re stuck without an answer, buddy. So instead of whining about it, why don’t you get down and help me here?”

Lance lets out a groan and hops off the counter. Taking one of the not-quite-tomatoes in hand, he begins to slice.

“Thanks,” Hunk says, absently.

“Sure thing.”

“…So are you done with this?”

“Dude I just started!” At least these slice easier than actual tomatoes; they’re a little firmer, even if they are a kind of startling purple color. “Just give me a second-”

“No, I mean…” Hunk sighs. Lance can hear, even if he’s looking down at what he’s cutting rather than at Hunk, how explosive the sigh is, how it must deflate the whole breadth of his chest. “Are you done with the Keith-thing?”

At that, Lance stops chopping. But he doesn’t look up. “What Keith thing?”

Hunk is silent for so long that Lance has to look at him. When he glances over his shoulder, Hunk is no longer attending to the stir-fry.

“I’ve seen you crush on a lot of people, Lance,” he says. “I have seen you act on more than a few of those crushes. But I’ve never had a psychic link to you while you’re crushing on someone until we got to space.”

Lance’s blood runs cold. Now, Hunk looks about as patient as Lance’s abelita had looked when she’d started asking Luis and Lisa when they were going to finally give her a great-grandchild. He even points his spatula at Lance, the way the women in Lance’s family do when they’re trying to guilt a confession out of someone. Lance watches the tip of the plastic utensil where it’s starting to drip sauce onto the floor. He looks at the droplets and not at Hunk.

“I wasn’t going to say anything because the UST around you two has _always_ been extra. But the last time we formed Voltron, the five of us, without Shiro, there was a distinct vibe.”

“A… vibe…?” Lance squeaks.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Hunk says. Once he, too, notices that he’s making a mess, he turns back to the stove. Before he speaks, again, he shakes his head. “It’s a _miracle_ nobody else noticed; Pidge thought you were fighting, and you can thank your lucky stars I didn’t correct her. Allura hasn’t said a word as far as I know, which makes me think she didn’t notice, somehow… But yeah. Wasn’t just UST anymore. You two were definitely fooling around.”

Lance feels himself turn red all the way down to his collarbones. Wide-eyed, he claps both his hands over his mouth; the knife clatters to the floor. Hunk is looking down at it when Lance says,

“O-oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think it would…”

Hunk reaches down for the knife. Probably so it doesn’t do any more damage. Hunk is thoughtful like that: cleaning up other people’s messes.

“You don’t have to apologize,” he mutters, tossing the knife into the sink and reaching into the knife block he’d gotten as a present from Vrepit Sal. He hands Lance a clean blade. Lance takes it without speaking. “I mean, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. You’ve told me point-blank you thought he was hot. And who else are you gonna hook up with, out here?”

Lance hears the wounded sound he makes and wonders where it came from. He never made sounds like that when Hunk used to ask about the girls he was hooking up with. “But it’s totally stupid, right? That’s why I didn’t- I mean, I would’ve told you, I wasn’t trying to keep secrets, but-”

“Lance,” Hunk says on a deep chuckle. “If you think I’m going to lecture you about the way you cope with being in a space-war, you are very much mistaken. I’m the last person who should be telling people how to cope.”

“Hunk, that’s not true,” Lance says. “You’re coping fine. Way better than you used to.”

Hunk hums in acknowledgment, turning back to the stove. “At least I don’t throw up more than once a month or so.”

“Exactly!”

“Or channel all my fear into sexual frustration that I then take out on my teammates.”

Lance feels his blush return. “ _Dude_. You said you weren’t judging-”

“I’m not. But you didn’t answer my question,” Hunk continues, merciless.

Tilting his head, Lance asks, “Which was…?”

Hunk repeats, slowly and patiently, “Are you done with it, now?”

Lance opens his mouth. Closes it. Licks his bottom lip, and opens his mouth again. Nothing comes out.

“You don’t know,” Hunk supplies.

Lance shakes his head.

“Well- Oh, _shoot_.” Hunk cuts himself off, grabbing a handful of the sliced not-tomatoes and adding them into the stir-fry. He manages to calm the concoction down as he works at it with the spatula, scraping all the burnt bits up from the bottom. With a few pinches of various spices they’ve gathered throughout the galaxies, he somehow salvages what smells a little burnt into something that smells smoky and purposefully complex.

After a moment of letting himself enjoy the way their dinner becomes fragrant and tempting, Lance hears himself ask, “Would you mind keeping this between us? You said Allura and Pidge probably don’t know and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

Frowning into the frying pan, Hunk sounds legitimately offended when he says, “You know I only give you flack about stuff like the Jennys back in Arizona. Or how territorial you get over Allura. You know, the things you’re obnoxious about.”

“Are you calling me obnoxious?”

Smoothly, Hunk ignores him. “You’re not open about this. The Keith-thing, or the bi-thing. So they’re not fair ground for teasing.”

Somehow, this makes Lance feel worse. He wants to shove his hands into his pockets and make himself as small as possible. Instead, he makes himself useful, cutting up a few more of the not-tomatoes and passing them to Hunk where he’s fiddling with the heat on the stove.

After a moment, he says, “Sorry…”

“Like I said, you don’t have to apologize. Not to me, anyway. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Either of you. Even if Keith is a great big abandoner.”

This forces a laugh from Lance. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Hunk raises his eyebrows, the superior air not lost on Lance. “Oh? What would you call it, when someone takes over as the leader of a team and then gives the team right back and leaves?”

“…I think that’s the meanest thing I’ve ever heard you say, Hunk.”

Hunk shrugs, and turns off the fire under the stir-fry. “I love the guy but none of us are equipped for this, Lance. It’s like Keith just… decided that he was the least equipped and bailed.”

Lance is used to being the one to point that kind of thing out. Jaw tight, he says, “I think he’s doing his best.”

“You would,” Hunk answers—very much under his breath. Louder, he adds, “So are we.”

Lance sighs. “Right. We’re doing our best.”

***

///

***

_09.02.2115_

_CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

They make breakthrough after breakthrough, tracking communications and cutting supply lines through the crumbling edges of the Galra Empire.

Keith can feel the buoyancy. The Blade of Marmora is an organization that has otherwise been so weighed down with duty, with history, with status quo, that there’s never been any time for triumph. But their breakthroughs have lightened tones, eased the hard set of shoulders. And when they discover the supply route of the quintessence the Galra plan to use to power the brand-new zaiforge cannons, Keith actually sees Kolivan _smile_.

It’s the first time Keith’s seen pure joy in one of the Blades, that he can remember. He almost doesn’t recognize it. But he’s getting better at reading Galra facial features. Expression comes less in the tilt of eyebrows—which is always a little fierce—and more in the line of the mouth or the angle of the head. And for many Galra, the ears give it all away. Keith’s own, immovable and human as they are, are one of the reasons he has such a hard time communicating with so many of the other Blades, he’s sure.

It’s not the only half-breed thing he has to contend with.

Fortunately, Keith isn’t the only half-Galra among the Blades. Not by a long shot.

Come to that, he’s not even sure he _is_ half-Galra. He could be a quarter. Even less. He doesn’t know anything about his mother’s heritage. Keith also doesn’t know anything about genetics, but it’s clear that the Galra are an invasive species on both a political and a scientific level. That’s probably a helpful trait, when conquering an alien race: the ability to breed them out.

Regardless, Galra tech relies on Galra DNA; and an eighth of that blood seems to be enough. the other part-Galra among the Blades make no secret of their pride in their heritage. Not the way empire-aligned, full Galra do, either. It’s not about one’s percentage of Galra blood; rather, it’s about using even a Galra great-grandparent against the empire that had made outcasts and spies out of all of them. Keith is stunned at the reach of the Blades, when he realizes how many of agents they’ve recruited among conquered peoples—long steeped in their own lives, isolated from the frontlines but always keeping their Blade nearby, should they be summoned. So many are willing to come out of anonymity or retirement to connect the dots in their expansive mission.

On that basis, Keith is able to form a few tremulous connections with others who have only unknown—but certain—Galra heritage. There are no such things as friends, in the Blade of Marmora. But Keith learns what others have learned to do with their own alien natures:

To use even a tiny spark of a connection for a greater good.

***

///

***

_09.18.2115_

_Sigma-3 Quadrant; Olkarion; Castle of Lions_

Lance becomes something of a loner, the longer this goes on.

The further they get, fostering diplomacy and strengthening the Coalition, the more time they have to attend to their specialties. Hunk and Pidge have more time to experiment with Altean and Galran integrations. Allura has more time to work on her alchemy. Shiro has more time to become something… else… in Keith’s absence.

And, of all things, Lance fills in Keith’s role as the loner. He’s filled in for him in so many other ways, stepping up to whatever Keith can’t or doesn’t do, himself. He just didn’t expect this to be one of those ways. He didn’t expect to be playing Killbot Phantasm by himself in the dark to pass the time, or to be talking to Kaltenecker like she can fill in the conversation Allura and Coran deny him when they freak out about the _extremely natural process of lactation, thank you_ ; what, are Alteans not mammals, or something?

Lance used to talk to the goats on his family’s land in Cuba. He’s always liked their weird, rectangular pupils, and how they kind of have a bad rap as destructive little bastards with supernatural connections. If he talks to a cow, now, no one can exactly blame him. He can’t talk to machines, the way Pidge and Hunk do, and he can’t talk to alien diplomats the way Allura and Shiro can.

Kaltenecker is a thousand times less of an asshole than any of these, anyway.

When he’s not actively trying to pass the time, Lance gets as serious as he can about the mission—whatever it happens to be. Whether it’s helping to finally mobilize Coalition forces along strategic lines or putting on Coran’s increasingly extra Voltron Show.

Razzle-dazzle, baby.

***

///

***

_10.03.2115_

_CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

There’s a reckoning, coming.

They’ve been planning, and strategizing, and sneaking for such a long time, their newest combined information has them ready for movement. For so long it’s been about maintenance. About staying just ahead of the status quo. But now, the squadron he’s assigned to is distracted. Delighted, even. They break off from tracking the new quintessence and return to Marmora headquarters, risking a full-on video feed to Voltron, where they start to craft the plans for mobilizing the Coalition and shoring up the line between it and Galra territory proper.

On screen with Team Voltron, Keith doesn’t _have to_ say anything. And he doesn’t have anything _to say_ , really. He’s kind of a decorative piece, standing at Kolivan’s left hand. He doesn’t have any particular status in the Blade of Marmora other than as ostensible link between it and Voltron. But, he’s been told, it’s important that he’s seen as that link.

This is one if the reasons he never wanted to be the leader of Voltron: so much of it is about appearance. There’s a difference between strength, the ability to make a good decision, and _appearing_ strong, looking like you know you’re making the right decisions.

Now, someone else is leading. Someone else is directing. And that’s more than fine with Keith. As usual, he’s the only variable he can control; he can make good decisions from the shadows.

Falling in line, being ready to drift where the war’s tide sends him, is so much easier than fighting every aspect of every waking second.

But Keith’s life has never been easy. He doesn’t know that he ever wants it to be.

***

///

***

_10.18.2115_

_Zone Rebulon 36; orbit around Naxela; Red Lion_

Naxela is _not_ going to blow up.

The readings from the weapon on the Galra cruiser go suddenly dark, and over the comms Coran assures them that the holdout planet on the frontlines is subdued, and Shiro is congratulating the wayward Black Paladin on a job well done—

All of this is happening at once.

And in slow motion, a few Extremely Troubling Revelations come to Lance’s mind.

At least they feel like they come in slow motion. They drip like a leaky pipe, one at a time, in the space between Shiro’s words and Keith’s response. Lance knows in his gut that he’s going to be very upset about what he’s realizing; but he doesn’t know why, yet. Not until his brain has a second to catch up to what his instincts already know.

“It wasn’t me,” Keith is saying.

Right, Lance thinks. Lance doesn’t know what Keith is flying; none of them do. Whatever makeshift craft it is, though, it’s no Lion. It wouldn’t have a weapon powerful enough to stop a Galra cruiser, to immobilize it or even damage it enough to distract its occupants from whatever explosive end the witch Haggar was planning for Naxela. Particularly if they had to content with a particle barrier—which is likely. Keith couldn’t have done anything about that. None of the rebel ships are packing heat sufficient take one down.

“It was Lotor.”

Of course it was. The bastard’s weapons are like Voltron’s: fueled by a trans-reality comet. With a well-placed shot, the wayward Galra prince _could_ have taken down a particle barrier. He could have—

“The cannon on his ship was the only thing powerful enough to take down that shield.”

But what in _god’s name_ could Keith have done? How could Shiro even think of congratulating Keith when they damn well know that their victory has to have been won via Voltron-grade weapon? That, or via pilot crazy enough to detonate his ship’s power source from within enemy territory, from inside a particle barrier or a cannon’s bore.

Which would mean—

There’s a very old song that Lance knows about stepping back from the ledge.

About an angry boy, the first to fight.

About _no one_ knowing what they are doing, here.

Lance doesn’t know why, but he has that song on his datapad. It doesn’t really match the rest of his collection. He’s got a lot of Latin jazz, for relaxation, and bachata, for stress relief. A lot of salsa and merengue, too. But he’s got a couple songs from his time in the U.S. The twentieth century rock song he’s remembering is written in the vernacular of an English Lance barely recognizes, having grown up with music written in contemporary, twenty-second century Spanish. But he’s heard the song a few times, and it is not so ancient that he doesn’t understand the sentiment: the pain of knowing that you don’t belong.

Lance doesn’t think he belongs here, either.

But he sure as hell is not going to let that self-pitying thought dictate his tomorrow.

Or, if he can help it, the tomorrow of anyone on their team.

There are people waiting for him, at home.

There are people waiting for him _here_ , too. Counting on him. Allura counts on him; and when he realizes that, it’s such a shock that he can only tell her that their victory—that whatever she does to get them off Naxela’s infinite-gravity-surface—is all her. Keith counts on him, even if he’s making noise about not even being on the team, about having to take a chance that none of the rest of them can take. Shiro counts on him, even if he won’t admit that Lance was right when he insisted they should get off Naxela and not give the generators the chance to pin them down.

Lance vows, in this moment of clichéd connection to a song generations old, that he is _never_ going to tell Keith how glad he is that someone else takes the choice away from him.

Lance is never going to tell Keith that, even though he learns to hate Lotor with every note in the song that is his soul, he will be eternally grateful to him, too. That the cannon-fire of an enemy traitor pulls Keith back from the ledge, forcefully, and sets him back on solid ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been the hardest to fill in and it’s only after I’ve written so much of the rest of this saga do I know why.
> 
> The vision I had of this portion of the story was a few scenes flipping back and forth between Lance and Keith after Keith leaves for the Blade of Marmora—but I could never figure out what to say about Lance. Which seems stupid; because during this part of Season Four, we only know what Lance is doing. Keith doesn’t appear for like, 3 episodes. (Which drives me crazy lol) But I see, now. Even the people who are commenting in these early stages have noted how Lance kinda obfuscates and deflects—and I think he does that in show, too. Like, he’s “the loud one,” and he’s pretty open on the surface, but that internal monologue is hard to access. Maybe that’s the point.
> 
> Oh. [That face](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mV5mbdiDiiTWOafn2wFPukqopOtJS610/view?usp=sharing). That's the one. It's so brief I couldn't even find an existing screenshot of it and I can't.
> 
> ~~Also if you don’t knowwhat song I’m referencing in the last part of this I’m sorry but I am 90s trash and will always be 90s trash and I will write that character flaw into as much fic as I can~~


	6. Chapter 6

_10.18.2115_

_Zone Rebulon 36; Naxela’s star system_

Keith relies on the fact that he can trust his body to do what needs to be done.

When the Blades had started boarding druid-occupied cruisers, tracking the new quintessence, Keith had trusted his body’s ability to move without being detected. When they had been surveilling Quadrant Beta-9, three movements ago, and a Galra sentry had come so close to taking out his eye that he could feel the breeze even as he summoned his mask, he’d trusted his body’s ability to dodge. He can trust in his body’s strength, or its silence, or its speed. His training with the Blade of Marmora has honed his body into a weapon suited for the mission, whatever that mission happens to be.

Today, however, Keith’s body cannot be trusted.

Not twenty minutes ago, it almost flew him into the particle barrier of a Galra cruiser in the wild hope of giving his friends a chance to make it off Naxela. Now, his hands are shifting over the controls, coaxing the pirated Galra fighter to regroup with the other rebel craft as they set trajectory to rendezvous with the Castle of Lions—and Voltron. As he follows Matt’s boxy, Coalition-issue junker, his nerves set off a fine tremor in the center of his chest, spreading out to all of his limbs. It’s not enough to start him shaking; he’s an excellent pilot and nothing short of actually _losing_ one of his limbs could force him to steer off a chosen course.

But his body knows as well as the rest of him does—mind and soul—how close he had come to death.

It hadn’t happened. He’s fine. He doesn’t need his team— _anyone_ to tell him that. What he needs to do is get a grip, regroup with Kolivan, and head with him and the other Blades to the nearest safehouse. Once there, they can complete their debrief and then get Voltron on a video comm-feed, so the Coalition leadership can see all the key members of the fight alive and in one piece.

Instead, Keith finds his fingers flicking through comm frequencies. He closes the ones the Coalition can access and hails the Blades likely to be nearest.

“This is-” His voice grinds to a startled halt. His throat has to clear itself of the grit before he can continue. “This is Keith, checking in.”

“Reading you, Earthling,” answers one of the Blades’ top lieutenants.

“Receiving,” says a voice that can only be Kolivan’s. “Others disconnect.”

It’s not unusual to keep these types of comms as limited as possible. Still, thinking he’s about to get yelled at for taking things into his own hands, yet again, Keith clicks the other frequencies off and starts, “Sir, I’m on my way to-”

Kolivan doesn’t even let him finish.

“Go,” the older Galra says. If Keith doesn’t miss his guess, there is compassion, even humor, in the Blade-leader’s voice. “We must understand what happened on Naxela to move forward, and only Voltron’s paladins were there. If Haggar can trigger a bomb like that using quintessence, even from beyond a planet’s orbit, we need that knowledge before we set off on another wild hair. I’m assigning you the mission.”

“Understood,” he answers, automatically, shutting off the Blade frequency and dialing back into the Coalition before his mouth can even shape the words, “ _Thank you._ ”

Keith doesn’t need to see the paladins in person, to know they’re all alive.

He sure wants that, though. He wants knowledge he can confirm with _all_ of his senses: Lance’s laugh, Shiro’s patented reassuring shoulder-squeeze, the smile Hunk and Pidge share whenever a mission goes their way.

Keith wants a few other things that will remind him _he’s_ alive, too.

There’s another group hug. More a dogpile than anything else. Keith steps out of the fighter and into the castleship’s hanger and only has time to take down his mask before Pidge barrels into him. She’s the fastest one in the group; but Allura is not long after, throwing one arm under Pidge and one arm around Keith’s neck and squeezing them together. Hunk and Lance are not far behind her, but both just offer waves from a distance—reserved, and bashful, by turns—until Shiro walks past both of them and drags them by the scruff of their necks until they are all pressed together.

“That’s not gonna happen again,” Shiro says, against the top of Keith’s skull where he’s dug his chin in tight.

Keith shakes his head.

Everyone squeezes a little bit tighter.

Did Keith not say, before?

One group hug away from being an episode of an after-school special.

The Paladins of Voltron—current, and former—suffer through the impromptu party. Useful, that ballroom in the castleship’s lower levels. The Coalition leaders, so accustomed to the scraped-together resources they’ve been working with for all these months, are duly impressed by the little bit of Voltron magic that goes into it: Pidge’s touch in the animated starmaps projected into the upper reaches of the ceiling, pretty rather than utilitarian like the ones they’re all used every day; Allura’s regal change from Blue Paladin to heir apparent, draped in a gown even Voltron has only seen her in once or twice; Hunk’s feast-worthy cooking.

Keith supposes they _should_ celebrate the fact that the Voltron Coalition now has control over about a third of the Galra Empire’s territory. And as the designated Blades representative, Keith should make his appearances for the rebel cause. Even if that involves shaking hands and sharing drinks with more than a few grateful strangers.

_(“Captain Olia’s told us how you and the other Blades have been searching for the Galra Prince,” says a diplomat from the canine captain’s home planet. “Can you believe that he’s come right to us? What d’you suppose he means by it?”_ )

Even if it involves Shiro pressing another drink into his hand and then lecturing him about his suicidal tendencies.

( _Voltron’s leader says, not for the first time, “Dying is easy.”_

_“You know I don’t do ‘easy,’” Keith answers—again, not for the first time._

_He tries to smirk. Shiro just looks at him, not even smiling back._

_Partly, it’s that distance that’s been between them since Shiro recovered from being re-captured by the Galra. Partly, it’s that Keith shouldn’t even try to make light of this and he damn well knows it._

_So he says, “I won’t forget that, ever again. I promise.”_ )

All the fuss of being right back in the heart of the war effort, of having to hold himself steady in the limelight, is just about worth it, however, every time he turns and sees the faces of the paladins. Smiles sparking, moving easily through the crowds they’ve won over, they are incandescent and gemstone-bright in their armor. He told them when he left; they don’t know how much it means to him that they’re here, helping hold the universe up—helping hold him up, and each other.

More than once, Keith catches eyes with Lance. For the first couple hours, the eye-contact is nothing more than steady. But once the crowd has thinned out, a little, Lance tilts his head at the door. Keith tracks the minute movement, nods, and follows. They leave one at a time, choreographed, from different exits.

Their non-verbal communication is so much better than it used to be.

And the physicality between them is just as good as ever.

Barely making it to the designated corridor before he presses Lance against the wall, Keith rocks up to lick deep into Lance’s mouth. It’s all heat and soon-to-be-discarded uniform. Keith can feel everything through the Blade suit; that’s how it’s designed, to be so reactive to the environment that it’s like your entire body is a livewire. So he doesn’t miss a single press of the plastoid plates of Lance’s blue paladin armor, doesn’t have any illusions over exactly how tight Lance grips him, armored fingers pressing into arms and jaw and lower back.

“Wait-”

Lance, who _had_ been very into the kiss, pulls back. Again, he says, “Wait,” and Keith’s stomach drops out.

Does Lance not want… Really, Keith shouldn’t want it, either, their extremely ill-advised time as just-slightly-more-than-partners was—

“Not here,” Lance finishes, taking Keith’s hand into his own.

The gesture is so startlingly intimate that Keith can’t reconcile it, almost keeps panicking over the imagined rejection. Lance looks down at where he’s rubbing his thumb over the back of Keith’s gloved hand, eyebrows just barely pinched together.

“No one’s expecting you back?”

Keith shakes his head, silently.

Lance gives him a look like he knows that it isn’t all of it. He doesn’t let go of Keith’s hand.

“They, uh.” Keith pulls back, taking his free hand for himself and self-consciously wiping a string of spit from the right side of his mouth. “I’m supposed to stay so I can handle the Coalition debrief.”

Lance gives a sideways smile. “Typical Keith.”

Keith frowns at him. “I don’t think anyone’s sober enough to debrief tonight so yeah, I guess I’m staying.”

Lance’s smile grows, both sides of his mouth quirking up, now.

“…You heading back to your old room, then?”

Keith doesn’t appreciate how triumphant Lance looks right now, so he says, “Yes. I’ve got work to do.”

“Work!?”

“I should draft a mission brief now, tonight…”

They’re playing a game, obviously. But Lance cheats. He turns; he crowds Keith against the wall even as Keith speaks. He fights Keith with an intense gaze, with trailing fingers up and down his sides, refusing the verbal challenge.

Keith continues, anyway. “I should at least write notes, so I don’t forget anyth-”

Lance catches Keith’s tongue as it darts between his teeth on the beginning of that third syllable. He does very thorough job of making Keith forget the challenge, and his pride. Several minutes of this treatment, of the wet press inside his mouth, of the leg that slides between his own, of the gentle dig of fingers at the back of his neck, and Keith very nearly forgets his name, let alone his mission.

In the end, Lance wins.

Very quietly, against Keith’s mouth, he says, “You’ll write it in the morning.”

Keith blinks. “…Write what in the morning?”

Lance’s triumph is blinding. Keith knows it’s a slight, somehow, and will make sure to get even when he can remember why his pleasure is tinged with annoyance.

“That’s what I thought.”

They walk back to Keith’s room.

To do that, though, they have to pull away from one another far enough to walk a straight line. Once Keith has that distance, he half-wants to maintain it. Because in that distance, he can think. He’s not swimming in the sensory details, drowning in touch and smell and taste. He thinks; and he _thought_ he was done doing this when he stepped down as the Black Paladin. He thought he was done being distracted by his senses, when he left for the bitter cold of space, for the weeks-months-god-knew-how-long intelligence mission, tracking the new quintessence. Going cold-turkey, when he was coming off so many months of being essentially touched-starved, was nearly effective enough to convince him that he was done complicating things with sex. Then again, the Garrison hadn’t exactly beaten that out of Keith, either—

It sure is a useful grounding mechanism.

Sex is useful for a _lot_ of things. Some people learn that early; Keith had. He sees in his mind’s eye a dozen other self-destructive walks leading to a dozen previous entanglements, not all of which had been with guys as nice as Lance, but all of which had helped him feel something, or forget it, or remember. Lance is the only person Keith has hooked up with in space. Although Keith is now living a life with enough regimental discipline that doing something so out of control shouldn’t sound as appealing anymore, it really, _really_ does.

“So we found Lotor.”

Keith is so thrown by the sudden conversation that he stops outside his own door.

Lance quirks an eyebrow at him, punching in the override code in the panel outside. The fact that Lance remembers it after the weeks they’ve been apart should not thrill him. But it does. “I mean, you were the one that said Lotor was the one who shot, not you, right? He got the _coup de grace_ in on Haggar’s ship.”

Keith nods. Then he wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think that’s how you pronounce it, but yeah, he did.”

Lance shrugs and steps through the door. “I’m a native Spanish speaker; French sucks. What do you want from me?”

What indeed.

Keith watches Lance walk to the center of the room and stand there, hands on both his hips. He thinks maybe they’re both pretending they’re a little less intoxicated than they actually are. Keith doesn’t know how many drinks Lance has had; but Keith had downed more than a few, and they’re catching up to him. He makes it inside and engages the lock function on the door before he leans up against it, eyeing Lance up and down.

“So…”

“So you said you’re staying for the debrief, but are you actually coming back?” Lance asks.

This sobers Keith up. Mouth open and head dipping down a little under the weight of Lance’s stare, he must wait a second too long to respond.

Lance frowns a little. “You were the one who made such a big deal about the fact that you _had_ to be on the Blade mission that found Lotor.”

Keith blinks. Then nods. “Yeah.”

Lance gestures widely. “So. Lotor is found.”

Keith shakes his head. “…Right, but the new quintessence _isn’t_. We’ve got leads, but not…”

Lance sighs, his arms dropping to his sides in what looks way too much like defeat. “But-”

“But what, Lance? I said I had to be on the mission so we could get to the root of what the Galra Empire is looking for. Obviously Lotor has something to do with it but if he was the one who shot at Haggar’s cruiser, then-”

Lance shakes his head. “I think you’re moving the goalposts, man.”

Keith is one-hundred-percent not sure how they went from making out in the hallway to almost arguing in his old bedroom in so short a timespan, but he is absolutely not on board with this turn in the conversation.

“I’m not really sure what you want from me right now, Lance.”

Lance’s sigh, complete with an exaggerated eyeroll that says, “ _Yeah, I’m sure you aren’t_ ” much more eloquently than any words he could possibly string together. Still, he sounds surprised—but, also, not at all surprised—when he says, “You aren’t coming back, are you?”

Keith gapes like a fish for a moment. “N-… I’m here for the mission…”

Lance scoffs, shrugging. “So.” He’s already pulling his shirt off over his head and walking toward Keith’s bed as he speaks. “Did you come with _me_ for ‘thank-god-we’re-alive’ sex? And that’s it?”

But for all that exposed skin, glistening with sweat under the night-dim cycle-lights of the castleship, it’s starting to feel like Lance is closing himself off from Keith.

Keith doesn’t want that to be the way it goes down, this time.

He steps forward and grabs Lance’s wrist. “Hey.”

Lance turns to look at him over his shoulder. “Do you want to or not?”

Keith has to swallow around a sudden tightness in his throat, his chest. He looks down at where his fingers grip, pale against the brown of Lance’s skin.

“I do, but not like this.”

“Not like what?”

_Not with you looking like you’re going to keep hating me in the morning_.

“Not with us fighting. I’m… pretty tired of that, actually.”

Lance just looks into his eyes. He seems to catch something there, to notice the way Keith’s just barely holding it together. He seems to take pity. For once, Keith doesn’t mind that pity probably _is_ what it is.

Lance turns around fully, takes the wrist of Keith’s other arm in his own hand, and tugs him forward. Finally, deceptively light, he says, “I still reserve the right to make fun of you when it’s warranted.”

Keith smirks. “Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

They’ve never once talked about what it means that they keep sleeping together. Keith is fairly certain that Lance’s affections still lay elsewhere. Lance has always had a thing for their Princess. Shit, Keith has a thing for more than a few of the people he’s flown with over the past year. For Shiro, first and foremost. And he would be lying if he said there weren’t a few half-Gala who were close enough to human in build and feature that he sometimes daydreams about what _that_ would be like. But those have always been like the “thing” you have for the hottest guy at the gym; you’re never going to do anything about it.

Keith was never going to do anything about this.

And they don’t talk about it now.

As Lance leans down this couple inches that still separate them and crowds into his space, Keith thinks that they channel something like an attempt at talking about it into their kiss. Keith directs something like apology toward the teammate he’s left behind. Lance directs something like patience into the way he snakes his hands into the fastenings of Keith’s Marmora armor and works it open, scrap by scrap, layer by layer.

But there’s still a demand, in the way Lance touches Keith. Lance is asking for a reckoning. And, for once, Lance seems sure enough that Keith finds himself standing aside and letting Lance find it for himself.

Tonight, Lance surprises Keith.

Tonight, he undresses Keith totally and bullies him over the threshold of an orgasm before Keith can even get his arms up and back into his hair to tie it away from his face. After the first round, he knows they’re not done. Lance’s goal is to lay him out like a prize against Keith’s own sheets and bully everything out of Keith that he can get away with.

And he does.

Lance lays Keith down. He clucks over all the new scars. He makes a fuss about the one on Keith’s left side—which he has already seen, but apparently does not remember—from where Keith’s suit was punctured by space debris from the exploding decoy ship in Quadrant Omega-Radar-6. That one is not new, and Keith tries to tell him that; the one through his eyebrow, from the sentry in Quadrant Beta-9 _is_ new, and could have cost him more than the ugly scrape. But Lance looks like he’ll argue if Keith says any of this. And Keith likes this liminal space they’re in, now. So he lets Lance make noise about what he likes: about how Keith needs to be more careful, about how he’s “obviously become more of a reckless little monster now that he doesn’t have the paladins to even him out, and he’s going to send his Marmorite buddies into an early grave if he doesn’t repent of his hotheaded ways.” But the rhythm Lance sets over his sides and his back is not that different from the rhythm he was using to stroke Keith to completion, minutes ago, and so Keith is hard-pressed to be threatened by anything he says.

Lance runs his fingers back and forth, considering, when he gets to Keith’s upper back, his shoulders. They’ve all seen the scar from his Trials, but it doesn’t stop Lance from touching it like there’s something he can do about it.

“I guessed you get messed up pretty regularly, jumping into everything the way you do…” His fingers glide along the shiny flesh to the right of Keith’s collarbone.

Keith winces. Not at the touch; but at the memory that there are other scars near it, each an indictment embossed into Keith’s skin, that he doesn’t really want to discuss. He realizes too late. They hadn’t exactly spent time exploring each other like this when they were messing around before. And damn it, Keith has already put his hair up, at this point, and so everything is accessible, on _display_ —

“Is your skin just that delicate?”

“Don’t be an _ass_ —”

Lance ignores him. “These have got, like…” Lance skims the pads of his fingers over three raised ridges, in measured succession. “A pattern to them. Not from an explosion, or an edged weapon. What happened?”

Shit. Keith closes his eyes and breathes out, hard, through his nose.

“Doesn’t matter what happened,” Keith says, as Lance continues to finger his way over other fresh scars. “I lived. So it’s fine. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Lance says, slowly. “I guess. It’s fine it you don’t want to talk about it, but-”

Keith doesn’t want to talk about it.

He wants to suck Lance’s tongue into his mouth, and then suck his cock down his throat, and then inhale, grasp and pull Lance into every part of him that will open up for the space Lances takes up.

And though they’ve both already come this evening, now it’s there, again—the urgent need, rising and twisting and telling Keith weird stories about what this means for them.

What they mean to each other.

So Keith does all the things he feels like doing. He turns, bears his weight down against the boy in his bed. Kisses him for long enough that he starts to get hard again, under him. At which point, Keith trails his way down, over Lance’s torso, over the steep shadow of muscle and the shallow shadow of scar-tissue, and grabs at the base of Lance’s dick before bringing it into his mouth. Lance shoves both of his hands against the lower half of his own face in an attempt to keep quiet. He looks down at what Keith is doing. He’s always liked this part: watching, as Keith pays careful attention to the most sensitive parts of him. Keith sees the minute Lance gets distracted by Keith reaching back, planning to finger himself open, all the while working at Lance like he’s planning on finishing him off this way…

Lances takes one of the hands away from his mouth, flails with it until he’s trailing over the dip in Keith’s spine, over the wrist Keith’s got twisted at an awkward angle to drive into himself.

Keith takes pity, pulling off Lance.

“Perks of being ambidextrous,” Keith says—each word so off-the-breath he’s not even sure they count as language, at all.

“Show off,” Lance answers, equally as out-of-breath.

Keith goes back to what he was doing. His left hand curls around the base of Lance’s cock so he doesn’t get too into what Keith is doing, doesn’t get so distracted by tongue and lips that he forgets that Keith is willing to give him everything else, too. But Lance doesn’t actually sound all that distracted. Soon, Lance’s hands start wandering, and his fingers cover Keith’s where they’re spreading himself open.

“Can I… help with that?”

Keith stills, spit-slick, feeling heavy and weighed down from both ends. He generally doesn’t like to let other people do that part. Hell, when he was actively hooking up with people, on Earth, he’d learned the trick of just wearing a plug so there was basically no prep involved.

But again. Tonight, something in the way Lance is teasing at their dynamic, in the way he’s been so clear and demanding in exactly what he wants, makes Keith want to let Lance do as he likes.

Lance pulls him up, onto his chest. Keith goes with it. He bites his lip and lets his own hands drop away. And it’s clear that Lance wasn’t watching for nothing. Within _minutes_ , Keith is coming on three of Lance’s long, dexterous fingers, cock dragging over Lance’s abs and leaving pearls of come. But it’s that pressure inside that’s really doing it for Keith. When Lance keeps pressing at him, rhythmic and sure, the surge of his climax rises through him like a riptide, rolling wave after wave. It gets so intense that he can’t do anything except stop fighting it.

He’s been told about, though never experienced, waves like that.

Lance has told him about waves like that: the kind that you have to give into, the kind you have to let carry you to the shore lest you risk fighting so hard you drown.

It doesn’t fucking _stop_.

But if Lance’s metaphorical language is the sea, Keith’s is harder, sharper. Even in the midst of the shivering, Keith begins to feel that each wave is a blade, cutting him down. The heat drains from him and spreads along his back, like blood dripping out of him and onto the sheets. Lance’s doing, whatever the weapon. Blades, guns—some ancient chorus about having your finger on the trigger rolls through Keith’s head, and it makes him catch his breath on a chuckle and ride out the aftershock, lets how ridiculous all of this is slice right into him.

Keith laughs, as he comes down. Lance doesn’t laugh. But he _gasps_ like he kind of wants to laugh—or at least wants to acknowledge with good humor the way Keith shatters apart under his hands.

They don’t know, _can’t_ know, that it’s going to be the last time.

But later, Keith will think, Lance might. Somehow.

He flips Keith to his back. At least he’s shifted them away from the wet spot—but before Keith can complain about anything else, Lance settles in between his thighs. As he drags himself over Keith, and Keith spreads his legs and arches backward to accommodate him, Lance gives an approving, contemplative noise. “Good, you’re gonna stay like this.”

Keith has just enough sense left to raise an eyebrow. “If you give me a reason to.”

Lance looks down at him and squints. “Anyone ever tell you you’re real bossy in bed?”

Keith snickers, even as Lance lines himself up.

“I’ve wanted to see your face. You, under me like this, from the first time we did anything,” Lance says. “That reason enough?”

“Huh.” The scoff is less dismissive than he intends. Keith is still breathing hard as the head of Lance’s cock drags over his rim. Catches, and pulls down. “Sentimental.”

Lance gives a disbelieving half-laugh. Then he smirks as he shifts impossibly closer to Keith, starts to push in. “No. It’s because you’re nice enough to always put your hair back for me. Don’t want your effort to go to waste.”

Keith wants to say that he doesn’t do it for Lance—it’s _habit_ , okay—but he doesn’t have the energy to scold him anymore. Especially not when Lance sinks into him. Carefully. Seeming to feel, to _relish_ , every inch of it. No; Keith doesn’t snipe back. He just lets his hands fall uselessly at his sides and lets himself be right where he is.

The way they finish is far too sweet for the way they started. Lance is apparently a man of his word: he watches Keith’s face the whole time. Pressing in, he fucks Keith at an almost leisurely pace—possibly, Keith thinks, so he can keep focusing on his face. This angle isn’t as good for Keith, but it hardly matters, since he’s come twice already—and he has a feeling that Lance is the kind of lover who will take care of him, if Keith gets hard again before Lance is done. More than a feeling; in his handful of memories, Lance always made sure Keith was satisfied. Keith was supposed to be saying goodbye, and was instead inviting Lance to bed on an almost nightly basis; and Lance always made sure the breach in etiquette was worth the trouble.

Regardless, with Lance looking at him now like he’s the entire universe, the heat creeping back into Keith’s belly is satisfying enough.

“Want you to come in me this time,” Keith manages. “You’d never do it, before.”

It’s an absolutely filthy thing to say—and sentimental, _god_ , talk about sentimental. In fact it’s… kind of a super intimate and invasive thing to let someone do; but there’s something in Keith that wants that. Not all the time, and definitely not with every person he’d had sex with. But he wants it, right now, and Keith can feel his scalp prickling in embarrassment for a long moment after the words escape him.

Lance, however, does not seem embarrassed. He just breathes out, “You keep sayin’ things like that and you’re not gonna have a choice when and where I come…”

Keith just grins up at him—and suddenly it feels dangerous. It feels like he’s telling Lance that he _wants_ to see Lance make good on that lack of self-control.

For a moment, it looks like Lance wants nothing more than to fuck his _own_ lack of self-control into Keith. And he does. Oh does he ever. He breathes with Keith, shifts one of Keith’s legs up onto his shoulder and drives in, timing sure and precise and destructive. Self, and otherwise. He’s ruining them both; so much so that Keith starts to shift to get Lance deeper, that Lance starts to shift up from underneath him like there’s a button he wants to press. And he succeeds.

It’s one time too many.

Keith lets out this shattered little _scream_. He’ll be humiliated to remember it, later, but _god_ it feels good.

Lance asks—actually puts words to it—“Did you just come again?”

Keith answers with the most colorful, wet sound he can manage. He’s surprised; he’d come once, and gotten hard, and come a second time. So he didn’t think…

Coming a third time, untouched, is worthy of screaming, he supposes.

Not that he can say any of that.

Apparently Lance can. “You weren’t even hard yet. Have you ever done that before?” he demands, as Keith shakes his head and tries to savor the way Lance’s smile creep over his face, curling, slow and wet and soft like the way his hair curls in at the nape of his neck.

Nobody has been able to do this to him.

Lance doesn’t look at Keith when he comes, himself. He never does. He muffles his own groan against Keith’s shoulder and hugs tight to him. Keith brings his hands up to Lance’s shoulder blades, rubbing soothing circles. Grips him close. Feels every twitch and uncomfortable aftershock of his climax.

Keith cedes something to Lance, in that gesture. But he finds that he doesn’t mind. He’s surprised at how calm he feels—about all of it—as Lance shudders through each aftershock. Keith doesn’t want to panic, or hide. He doesn’t even want to stifle this serenity with sarcasm.

From the very first time, he definitely thought he’d be giving Lance shit about coming too quickly—or at least coming first. But even during the weeks they did this while Keith was still on the team, he never had room to do either.

They stay that way for a long time, wrapped tightly in each others arms.

Eventually, Lance pulls out and starts to make awkward noises over the mess. He flails, looking for something to clean them off with. He settles on a t-shirts crumpled on the floor. Keith hopes it’s his own and not the one Lance wore beneath his armor and undersuit, because if not, Lance will have to borrow one of Keith’s, and Keith hates to admit it but the damn beanpole will stretch it out.

Not that he’d ask for it back. Not that he has much reason to wear casual wear among the Blades.

After they’re relatively tidied up, Lance starts to look a little lost.

“Just sleep here,” Keith says.

Lance perks up like a spoiled puppy. Predictable. “Can I?”

“Yeah. If you go grab another sheet. And find me something that’s not a _shirt_ to clean off with. Amateur.”

Lance ignores this last bit, offering Keith a suspicious look. “I see how it is. I can crash here, but only if it’s convenient for you.”

Keith snorts. He lies back, running one hand lazily over his torso, his rapidly cooling skin. He watches Lance watch him. “Well yeah. I’m not sleeping in this mess and you’re already halfway to standing up. You might as well.”

Lance laughs, then. Keith shamelessly observes the way he walks across the room. The year and change they’ve been in space has certainly done a number on his physique. He’s still bony, a little too long-limbed, but he’s started to fill out across the shoulders, started to build bulk where his collarbones already stretch wide and appealing.

Keith doesn’t want to move, and so they just kick all the ruined bedding away, curling haphazardly under the fresh sheet. Keith is gonna be out in seconds, he knows—too short a time to say anything about the way Lance curls around him. Tucks his chin against the top of Keith’s head. They way they fit together all soft angles among the quiet, comforting shadows.

Tonight will be the last night Keith ever sleeps in the Castle of Lions.

Neither of them know this, as they fall to unconsciousness, together.

Neither of them say anything to the other, early the next morning.

They get up, get dressed. They’re efficient; Lance knows what Keith is doing, and he doesn’t try to talk him out of it or make suggestions. They don’t hug goodbye. That’s not really their thing.

Kissing soft and innocent, with Lance’s thumb brushing at the hair around Keith’s ear and Keith’s fist curled loosely at the front of Lance’s t-shirt, isn’t really their thing, either.

But they do that, anyway.

It feels a little like a walk of shame, when, even before the cycle-lights have started to brighten, they head together—well, one at a time—out of Keith’s room. Meeting up a few hallways over, they walk together down the main hall to the bridge to debrief with a slightly hungover Team Voltron and the other Coalition leaders. It feels like sneaking, somehow, when Keith makes his way back to the pirated Galra fighter and returns to the ranks of the Blade of Marmora.

Keith doesn’t stop himself from feeling it.

It’s a good reminder, this feeling.

A reminder that there are only so many times he can say goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my personal favorite chapter and I may be on some bullshit but *shrug emoji* I’m pretty excited to share it. 
> 
> Here’s Allura’s [gown](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ac31SZJ9TudTHr6LcHyNKBSZKqY80KFT/view?usp=sharing)… Before I’d watched much VLD I thought of Allura as space-Zelda and now it’s an image I can’t get out of my head. And although she looks bomb in blue I think she’d wear their “fallen warriors” color at an event like this…


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Shows up two months late with Starbucks*  
> Hi friends I come bearing a necessary A to B chapter

_10.18.2115 - 11.06.2115_

_CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

Strategic interdiction.

In his months of training and studying in the leadup to the Battle of Naxela, Keith learned the names and functions of more than a few military tactics. Granted, he’d always been more interested in the history of small-scale, space-related campaigns: the very early days of commercial space flight, from SpaceX and the first reusable rocket launch systems to the resurgence of NASA’s scientific endeavors of the early 2030s and the massive commercial fight to compete with NASA to the early twenty-second missions that made flight to Kerberos possible. But the maneuvering of troops and supplies and information, itself, is almost as interesting—and certainly more valuable, now he’s living in a reality where he knows it’s possible to do things that he’s sure theoretical physicists on Earth are still fighting about.

For example, when the Coalition takes Naxela, it’s piece of strategic interdiction that disrupts too many communications and supply routes to salvage. Not only does it win them almost a third of active Galra territory. No; it also forces the Empire to pick its battles in a way it’s never had to do. It would take a massive campaign to re-fight this one; cut off so thoroughly from central command, all that vast amount of space would cost the Empire more than it’s worth to take it back.

Anyway, from the second the disgraced Galra prince starts gleefully dishing out the shiny viscera of the Empire out onto silver platters, the beast is too busy staunching its other wounds. For the first time in almost ten thousand years, the Galra don’t have the resources it would take to launch that kind of counter attack.

It isn’t immediately obvious until days after Keith returns from his debrief with Voltron. Partly because it takes Team Voltron a few missions of their own to trust the information Lotor gives them, and then a few more to trust it enough to pass it along to anyone else.

But once they do, it’s off to the veritable space races.

Voltron is in first, as usual. Allura and Shiro are master strategists; and when they see how thoroughly Lotor cuts into the guts of it all, how precise his rendition of timing and numbers and chain of command shoring up inter-galactic thoroughfares and outposts that once seemed impenetrable, they begin to let specific information bleed to the Blades, the Olkari, every last ally in the Coalition.

Not far in second is the Blade of Marmora. Once the senior Blades start to see how reliable Lotor’s words really are, they send as many Blades as possible into the field. Squadrons of Blades travel to corners of solar systems no one even knew the Empire had a particular interest in. Of the hundreds of active Blades already in the field—even those who’d been placed in out-of-the-way but still-potentially-useful backwater star systems, not exactly disgraced but not exactly at the forefront of strategy—most are redistributed in some way. No more than a skeleton crew remains at any base at any given time, and those that do are mostly injured and recuperating or worth more as a calculated loss, so close to retirement are they.

Keith is, obviously, neither one of these.

Evidently, Kolivan is convinced that no matter how skilled or how trustworthy any particular Blade is, each of them should be, _must_ be trusted to use every last one of their gifts to the highest advantage. Keith is convinced that that’s how he, himself, begins to rise so quickly through the ranks. How, despite the fact that he does things that are decidedly not protocol—despite the fact that some of his life’s most spectacular fuck-ups have been as a Blade—he gets results.

Case in point: he makes such an impression at the post-Naxela gathering in the Castle of Lions, _apparently_ , that members of the Coalition start approaching Voltron with requests for help—now, not just from Voltron itself but also from the Blades, when they need something more subtle than a giant, continent-smashing mecha.

As with so many things, Keith underestimates the impact of what he’s done.

From then, one intelligence-gathering mission bleeds into the next. Keith has always thought that this is the part of being in a spy collective that he was least suited for. But, at it turns out, a reputation as a pilot who can fly his way out of almost anything goes a lot further in this war than it ever did at the Garrison. He’s the fastest pilot in the Blades. That’s not ego; Kolivan tells him outright that Keith can probably outfly those war brats who have been flying spaceships since they were barely old enough to reach the pedals.

(Some of his fellow Blades start referring to him as “flyboy,” and it overtakes all of the nicknames Lance has ever pinned on him. Keith likes this nickname; and he hates how much he likes it.)

And that turns out to be a piece of the puzzle the Blades had been missing.

Because the thing is.

Neither the Blades nor the Coalition can trust deep intel to a digital channel. Some communication needs to be made in person, must be committed to flesh and blood and synapse. After all, the witch Haggar’s abilities notwithstanding, the brains of 99.999 percent of creatures can’t actually be hacked.

Keith has always found that interesting.

He still doesn’t know the extent of whatever it was Haggar did to Shiro during his time as the Champion; and he doesn’t know—and Shiro won’t tell him—whether any of it continued when he ended up among the Galra a second time. But how guarded Shiro is around the topic puts at least some of the Blades’ protocols into perspective. Despite the insane level of tech he’s encountered since coming into space, Keith is personally privy to how heavily the Blades rely on in-person intelligence. His first clue should have been that they plant agents in such deep cover without anything but a magic knife to connect them back to the cause. No long-range technology is safe enough from hacking. Even for an organization whose headquarters is located between two black holes.

So the in-person task of relaying intelligence from Lotor to the Blade of Marmora, and vice versa, falls onto Keith’s shoulders. He’s become not only Kolivan’s right-hand shadow at every open comm-feed between the Blades and Voltron but also once again a frequent if not exactly always announced—or… ever announced, really—presence aboard the castleship.

He’s not usually gone more than an hour. Two, at most. He’ll make it to one of the Blades’ few larger-class ships, a cruiser or even the more light-weight of the pirated freighters. Anything that can manage a light-speed jump. Flying a long-range pod or a fighter hell-for-leather, he’ll intercept the Castle of Lions. Docking in the castleship’s big, often-crowded hangar, he’ll slip to the ship’s lower levels, to the solitary cell where Lotor’s been confined, listen to him spit treason, and carry it back to Kolivan or whatever Blade-leader is nearest.

One trip, Shiro is standing outside the cell while Lotor explains the fine mechanisms of a highly valuable prison-colony to Keith. Keith hears the instructions from Shiro to one of the Voltron Coalition’s many lieutenants, who hems and haws and questions both Keith’s presence and Shiro’s own ability to translate what the Galra prince says into a plan of action suited to Coalition’s current strategy.

And for a vivid, ugly moment, Keith longs for that kind of leadership.

The kind he can question.

He can’t do that now, among the Blades. Not when he’s been trusted with so much. For all that he’s made his mistakes following wild hairs, his entire life has become one tightly-spun thread of protocol. Years of uncertainty, and now each hour is a fiber spun into a yarn under the drop-spindle of their mission, mechanical and sure. It’s _easy_ , even. To fall into line, in a way Keith never has done. Never has _wanted_ to.

He’s the first one of his acquaintances among the Blades—if not friends, at least those Blades whose names he knows—who recites the “mission-before-the-individual” soundbites, now.

More than any of the Galra-born, he internalizes these. He has to.

The way he has to make it back to his fighter before he encounters any of the other paladins.

Strategic interdiction.

(Keith thinks his twentieth birthday must fall somewhere in this relentless, blistering span of time. But he’s long past keeping track of things like the terran solar cycle. And he doesn’t have Lance to obsessively remind him. Or Pidge to correct his calculations, or Hunk to attempt to bake traditional frybread in a galaxy where there’s no such thing as wheat.

The substitutes they had found for honey and butter, however, had been divine.)

Then, the wheel of war turns again.

Lotor kills Zarkon.

The Blades’ mission changes—but not significantly. What they _do_ does not change, at any rate. They note the factions; they trace and wedge into the cracks in the Empire; they plant agents in amongst as much of the debris as they can manage, spreading the fissures wide and shoring up the weakness so that the way the whole crumbles is frankly stunning to watch.

There’s no more reasons for Keith to fly to the castleship.

Ultimately, the intel they gather from the chipped edges points them to the Kral Zera.

***

///

***

_11.06.2115_

_Planet Feyiv; Sacred Mountain of the Kral Zera_

Lotor sees Keith at the Kral Zera.

Allegedly.

In amongst the dust and debris, there’s no sign any of the Blades were present at the collapse of the Galra Empire. Really, there never is; they’re way better at covering up their tracks than Team Voltron. The Blades aren’t sloppy the way they are; a giant robot isn’t exactly subtle, nor do they bother to clean up after themselves much, Lance has to admit—and they’ve got merchandise at this point for chirsssake’s. Other than a few intrepid allies that have come to them with Very Specific Requests, the Coalition at large still isn’t sure the Blade of Marmora really exists.

But Keith exists. And Lance looks for him.

He hears all the gossip and he searches for any trace that their teammate—former teammate, though it’ll take a lot more than this for Lance to say those words out loud—was ever there. But of course there isn’t.

Heck, there’s not even any suggestion that Axca stays.

He’s not surprised that Keith doesn’t want to be found; but what he learns of Axca and Lotor’s other one-time lady-generals surprises Lance, a little bit. They don’t seem to have any interest in aligning with current Galra Empire’s leadership.

So where she, or any of Lotor’s-former-slash-Haggar’s-current (?) cronies go, nobody knows.

Sighing dramatically, Lance lets himself sound just as tired, as restless, as content as he feels. There’s no one awake to hear him, anyway. And he’s long accepted that he’s going to be dramatic whether there’s anyone to hear him or not. Everyone else has gone to bed for some much-earned and much-needed rest as before their very eyes, the bone-structure of the war changes like it’s getting a bad rhinoplasty.

Lance knows it’s too late for him to be brooding like this. His search has been futile; his helmet, lying a few feet away from him in the middle of the room, is a testament to that. Covered in the dust of the battle at the Kral Zera for absolutely _no reason_. If he’s gonna get that grimy, he usually likes there to be a reason. They’re grounded on Feyiv until Lotor decides what they’re going to do. But… there’s nothing he can do about any of that, now.

So, there’s the moment to salvage.

He’s sitting in one of his favorite places in the castleship—upside down on the sunken couch in the rec room, kicking his feet seemingly at random. (It’s not random; Lance has a song in mind, and he knows the downbeats, the upbeats, he wants to emphasize.)

And then Allura appears before him. Her half-sad expression upside down to his eyes, he amends his earlier thought that “everyone” was getting some rest. After all, she was scouring the ruins of the Galran sacred mountain, too. Though for what, he won’t even begin to guess.s

“Hey, Princess.”

He rights himself, for her sake. He slides down onto the floor, and then up onto the cushion, just one separated from where she seats herself. She’s more upright than he is, still; a lifetime of training to stand and sit and rise like royalty doesn’t vanish in the midst of an unexpected battle, or even in the darkness of afterward. In fact, those niceties have honed themselves to sharp edges, particularly over the past few weeks.

She’s as unapproachable as ever.

But she’s tired. Lance can tell.

They’re all tired. They both should be asleep, not sitting here posturing. But then, isn’t that what everyone who actually went to bed is doing? Pidge is undoubtedly late-night hacking, while the strain on the castleship’s communications networks is at its lowest. Hunk has probably already wandered back to the bridge to tinker with something—or, if Lance is lucky, to the kitchens to stress-bake. Shiro is most likely in his room but perched at his desk, relentless lists and charts of who was supporting who at the Kral Zera laid out in front of him like a last meal.

Lance thinks they all need to hear it, sometimes. That they can’t give more than they have in reserve. Whether they’ll hear it from him is one question. Lance is used to being talked over—and talking anyway. So whether Lance will try to bawl them out anyway is entirely another. The only other person who’s likely to do both—to talk over him but also _hear him_ —probably isn’t even in the same galaxy right now. Allura is as unlikely to hear his advice as Keith: but she’s _right_ _here_.

So he begins:

“Since when did the loyalties of half-Galra get so important to us, huh?”

She looks at him. He can see that she tries for patience. His comment was kinda out of left field, even he can admit that, and so he won’t blame her if all she can do is try. He holds onto that even as she says, voice less than patient, “What d’you mean?”

And Lance… doesn’t know exactly what he means. Not as he sits here, under the cycle-dark lights of the castleship. He _thinks_ he means a few things, but he’ll probably only get to the heart of them if he thinks them out loud.

“I mean…” he starts. He looks down, licks at his bottom lip. He starts with the easiest thing. “We’re kinda in the belly of the beast, now. Whatever Lotor does, at this point, we’re kind of tied us to whatever direction he decides to take the Galran Empire. Shiro’s made sure of that.”

Allura narrows her eyes and blows out her cheeks.

“Hasn’t he just,” she says, gritting her teeth.

Lance can’t help but watch the way the muscles of her jaws twitch. It’s the only tell. The rest of her body is still careful placed, graceful over the cushion. That self-arrangement takes its own kind of power, and Lance can’t help but admire how strong she is, body and soul.

Despite himself, Lance finds himself saying:

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

Allura stills, and looks at him.

“What?” she asks, again—this time with significantly more compassion.

“First of all: clench your jaw like that. You’ll give yourself tension headaches. Not to mention premature age lines.”

Allura laughs. It’s a short, shocked out of her in an electric-bright arc. She snaps her teeth over it and shakes her head—but she’s still smiling a close-mouthed smile.

“It’s true whether you want to hear it or not,” Lance adds. She is a teenager like most of them, after all. And a girl. Thought ought to get through, if nothing else does.

“I’m sure you would know,” Allura counters, still smiling but still very prim.

Lance shrugs, unsure what to make of the way she tempers that statement. “But yeah… Seriously, Allura, you don’t have to hide what all of this does to you,” Lance says, gesticulating vaguely at their surroundings. At the war that rages outside the hull of the castleship, at the ever-shifting and unreliable bonds that make wars happen in the first place. “It’s not good for you to keep all of that in. It’s not good for any of us.”

“I can’t afford to think about what’s good for me, now. Only what’s necessary.” Allura looks Lance over through the corners of her eyes. He feels that gaze, more than sees it. More than anything, he feels the way the smile slips from her face. “Anyway, I didn’t think you were talking about Lotor. Or only Lotor, at any rate. When you mentioned half-Galra and loyalty…”

She stops herself. Lance can hear it in the way she clenches her jaw, again. And then sighs, lets her jaw drop, a little.

“Better,” he comments. The tone is flippant, but when she turns her face to him, he knows that she knows what he’s doing, trying to appeal to her good humor. He’s pleased to hear that it’s with a little more ease that she continues.

“Prince—well, _Emperor_ Lotor is one variable. Our wayward Black Paladin is another.”

Lance winces. “Yeah I guess he would be one of the other half-Galra we have to worry about. Along with Axca, and Zethrid, and the pink girl, what’s her name, the sadistic one…”

Allura’s smile as he trails off is small but sincere. “You don’t have to pretend with me, you know. You just told me I don’t need to- _should not_ hide these things, and that applies to you, too.”

“What am I hiding?”

(Lance knows damn well, but it’s easier to pretend he doesn’t when he pretends out loud.)

Allura tilts her head. “That when you mentioned half-Galra, you thought of Keith first,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I apologize for sounding wary but I thought you were heading toward another rant. It’s been almost a phoeb since you last complained about him.”

This shocks Lance into silence. For a long moment, he’s worried that those months ago, Hunk was wrong when he said Allura didn’t notice the _vibe_ that he and Keith had apparently sent through Team Voltron’s psychic link.

But Allura just breathes—he would call it a sigh, but it’s too graceful for that label—and goes on. “Not that I blame you. I told Keith months ago that we could not go on without him. And now, we _are_ … We are going on. We will continue to go on.” She closes her eyes, just for a second. “But I barely recognize us, anymore. Not in this shape.”

For some reason, it’s that fact that gets her to cave.

Her body collapses in on itself. Well—“collapses” as much as a princess can collapse, the rigid arch of her back giving way to a slight forward bend, like she’s _just_ let go of the appropriate amount of core support. Like a parade-rest; still active, but just this side of slack-enough. What really gives it away is the soft little sigh, bone-weary, and Lance has never wanted to reach out and touch her more than he does in this moment.

He doesn’t, though.

“I miss our family,” she admits. Takes a breath that is downright shaky. Lance’s hand, extended over the back of the couch, twitches of its own accord. He curls his fingers inward. “We’re seeing results. We’re all where we ought to be. But half the time I don’t know what Shiro is thinking. And now Keith is gone, and I never got a chance to make up for how I made a proper mess of things when we learned of his heritage…”

Lance has to stop her. “I think he kinda made his own mess when he started choosing the Blade of Marmora over us.”

Still severe, Allura doesn’t disagree. “The Galra tend to ally themselves with a cause rather than a person. Their loyalty is abstract. I believe that’s why Lotor was able to dispatch his own father without any apparent distress. And why his former generals have abandoned him for Haggar; they’re after power and always have been. That’s why they flocked to Lotor and his new quintessence in the first place. But right now, Haggar’s got more power than the Empire’s tenuous heir.”

“Harsh,” Lance mutters.

Allura nods. “But I don’t think that’s what Keith’s done. I don’t know how widespread this knowledge is, Lance, so please don’t repeat this to anyone. I’m sure he’d be mortified if I knew. But… based on what I’ve gathered from Shiro and from Kolivan, the Blade of Marmora didn’t quite know what to do with Keith at first. He is loyal, fiercely so—to the _people_ behind a cause.”

Lance drums his fingers along the upholstery.

“…Do you think that’s why he left?” Lance asks.

Both of Allura’s perfectly manicured eyebrows shoot up. “You can’t mean you think his loyalties shifted from us to the Blade. To those who share his bloodline.”

“No, no no no.” Lance shakes his head. “I mean… Keith is as much human as he is Galra so unless he finds that Galra ancestor of his, we share as much blood as they do with him.”

Allura tips her head, as if to say, _point taken_.

“And sure, yeah, he probably bonded with some of the other Blades. But I also think… he knows he can’t separate the people and the cause. So… he takes the people out of the equation, when they’re too strong a temptation?”

“…If that isn’t half-insightful,” Allura mumbles. But her look of surprise shifts quickly, her brow pinched in thought. She looks down. “I suppose he does avoid spending any extensive time on board the Castle of Lions even when he is here. Often I’ve only known he was here when Shiro reports one of their conversations.”

Now Lance kind of wants to grit his jaw, grind his own teeth. For the sake of his skin, and his perfect dentition, he refrains. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done this. When he left with _you_ , it was because he thought Zarkon was tracking Voltron through him. And instead of thinking it all the way through, he decided that he’d separate himself. If there’s something he thinks he can do on his own, he’s going to do it.”

No loyalty to distract him if he can’t see the people he’s supposed to be loyal to.

No people to get hurt if he can get hurt instead.

These things are too mean even for Lance to say out loud. And anyway, the last one, at least, would be more than a little hypocritical. Lance himself has got a great big scar on his back from putting himself between harm and one of their teammates.

And Keith has _seen_ that scar. He’s seen many if not all of Lance’s scars. The star-burst on his back. The bullet wound—laser-wound?—in his thigh from the fight on an unexpectedly treacherous rescue mission. The nasty, root-like shadow on the inside of his bicep from getting _bit_ by a cow.

(Not Kaltenecker. Back on Lance’s family’s land, in Cuba. It was a breeding thing.

The first time he saw Keith eyeing it, Lance had told him not to ask.)

Lance has seen all of Keith’s scars, too. All the little nicks and cuts to fingers and knees from living in the desert among drought-sharp brush. And of course, the loudest one, the clean slice over his right shoulder that put him in the healing pod after his Trial. The neat lines of scarring over his upper back that Lance had tried to bring up but, when he saw how embarrassed Keith was about them, decided that if it was too intimate to discuss with the person he was hooking up with, well, then he probably wouldn’t share it with anyone.

Maybe with Shiro.

But…

At least Keith had let him see that much. See the physical manifestations of vulnerability, of humanity.

“He’d swear up and down it was about it was about strategy.” Lance finally says. “When he left in the middle of the night. When you both did. He’d probably swear this was the same.”

His eyes cut to Allura’s at this—and to his amazement, she looks chastened.

In fact, she’s _blushing_ when she says, “I did it for you—for the only family I have left. If you could stay together, if you could _fight_ together… it wouldn’t have mattered what happened to me.”

“Yanno…” Lance says, learning forward with his elbows on his knees. But he makes sure he’s smiling at her when he turns his head and says, “There’s a certain kind of arrogance in believing you’re _that_ replaceable.”

“Well.” There’s more color in her face, now, but at least some of it is from amusement. Her tone is only a little brittle as she says, “You should tell that to Keith.”

“I tried.” Lance blows out a breath. “Unfortunately, I think you guys are a lot alike.”

***

///

***

_11.06.2115_

_CRI >>sf312>>*classified_

When Lotor says these words in Keith’s hearing, on the mountain of the Kral Zora, he feels like he’s going to be sick:

“I knew they would all turn on each other.”

Not because these words reveal _anything_ to Keith about Galran loyalty. He knows all about that; he’d seen what Zarkon had done to those who’d been loyal to him, and he’d been watching up close and personal for weeks while the Empire’s heir apparent sliced up the beast from the ribcage out.

No. Rather, Lotor’s words remind Keith:

There are people _he_ can’t turn on.

No matter the mission.

Keith finds himself sitting alone, his back to the neon-purple lit wall of the corridor in one of the Blades’ few battle-class cruisers. He’s not sure, but he thinks he’s been here, sitting and brooding, for almost an hour. It’s the most down-time he’s had in a while. For the first time in weeks, the Blades don’t have a fresh lead to follow. They are all of them, all of the Coalition allies, in a holding pattern, for now. Keith knows this in the aimless way Blades whose strides Keith only vaguely knows and names he knows not at all wander past him, and then back again, as if searching for order, for direction, and being horribly out of practice at finding it themselves.

It’s hours more that Keith doesn’t move.

Lotor has been declared Emperor. Lotor is ostensibly the leaders of the Galra Empire, and now, with inter-galactic broadcasts spreading that revelation to every last system still declaring its loyalty, the Blades are frozen. In a holding pattern, waiting for any intel that will allow them to make their next move. Every single assignment of every single Blade in the closest orbit—the closest cluster of twenty-odd _galaxies_ —has to be reconsidered. Even Voltron is of no help, now; from what Keith hears, Shiro had led Voltron back to the Castle of Lions—though they’d stayed planetside on Feyiv in case there was anything to learn from the trappings of ancient custom, regardless of the fact that the Blade of Marmora had deemed it insignificant enough to plant explosives in its underbelly—and Lotor had taken one of his trans-reality ships to a docking station in a star system fitted with the Galra Empire’s most sophisticated communications equipment. There’s nothing to do but wait until Lotor gives some direction to the Empire’s decaying infrastructure. Nothing to do but hold formation and see if Lotor, as the spine of the cadaver that is the Galra Empire, shocks them into either a new direction or keeps them lulled in rigor mortis.

In that hallway, Keith’s only company is the echo of the most recent thing a fellow Blade has said to him. Vrek; she among all the Blades he’s worked with has mastered that half-compassionate, half-ruthless tone in telling the exact truth.

“Then you’ll die with them,” she’d said.

Because Keith had gone back for someone. Again.

Granted, he’d gone back for _Shiro_ , but the individual shouldn’t have mattered.

It’s the third time he’s done this, as a member of the Blade of Marmora. Or should he say the fourth? Keith doesn’t know that he had conscious control over what he tried to do during the Battle of Naxela; but he is absolutely certain Kolivan knew about it, and that he let it go unremarked upon. In fact, if Keith didn’t know better, he’d swear Kolivan warmed up to him after that. As warm as someone can go when they smiles once in a blue moon.

On the floor in the corridor, Keith presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. For a second, he lets it overwhelm him. How unmoored he is, right now. How his life among the Blade of Marmora does not, has never, followed any set of rules he’s ever known.

He’d been corrected before, when he’d been willing to make a martyr out of himself. It was so immediate, that reckoning. But now, it’s been _hours_ and no one’s said a goddamn word to him about what he’d risked on Planet Feyiv. He doesn’t know if either of his squad-members have told; he doesn’t know how far news of this particular reckless choice has spread.

If he had died at the Kral Zera in his efforts to help Shiro, and by extension Lotor… if he _had_ succumbed, there, under Sendak’s unforgiving advance, under his martial certainty that he was the best, the most fit for the job of gripping the Galra Empire tight enough by the balls to shift it into compliance…

Well, Keith’s death would’ve made the scars he carries on his back a lot more like the “I told you so” they were meant to be.

They _are_ starting to fade, now. Keith didn’t think they would; he doesn’t know, nor does he want to ask, how it works. Whatever devices the Blade uses to cause pain, and temporary scarring, but not lasting imprint or injury. They used similar technology during this Trials. They had to; were all his Trial-scars visible he’d look like he’d been on death’s doorstep a lot more often than he actually has.

And now that the are fading, the way most of his Trial-scars had faded, Keith is glad he hadn’t had the chance, or a reason, to tell anyone about the markings across his shoulders. And no one has seen them, that he knows of. Or, well. The only Paladin he’d had occasion to be shirtless around was Lance, who—Keith had made certain of this—hadn’t had the courage to ask Keith about them. Keith hadn’t had reason enough, even, to tell Shiro, who had been there when he’s gotten that first Blade-related scar that stuck, the one through his right shoulder. For some reason, that one’s never faded. He can’t think about that. Any more than he can think about the fact that Shiro probably should have noticed when Keith got _these_ , too, but somehow didn’t—even when he’d touched them, fresh, by accident.

Scars aren’t worth discussing, to Keith. They are just one more way to lose face in front of the team he’d tried, and so often failed, to lead.

The team he isn’t even a _part_ of, anymore.

But more than that, he doesn’t exactly resent any of his scars. Raw in their physicality, they had done just what they were meant to do: remind him to think twice, to weigh the emotion _and_ the thought, before making a move that costs more than the outcome is worth.

Still.

They were not enough to convince him that a Paladin of Voltron—that _Shiro_ —wasn’t worth deactivating every bomb he, himself, has planted. Wasn’t worth going against every order, isn’t worth the risk of death.

He’s torn into two versions of himself over his ruminations. One half is impatient, saying that the lesson should have stuck and that what he did was stupid because Shiro would have found a way out without Keith running around trying to deactivate a dozen bombs by hand; Voltron has proven time and again that he’s not needed. This is the half that has him sitting still, on the floor in the hallway of an alien spaceship, waiting for his next set of comprehensive orders.

This is not the half that is going to win, when he can make himself stand up again.

The other half is all spite. Is all cocksure reasoning that Keith is only here in the first place because he could never quite follow the rules. Is all hissing and spitting resentment and wanting to shove it in someone’s face:

He _didn’t_ die.

He risked himself. But he did the right thing.

Sometimes jumping into the line of fire _is_ the right thing.

How many times has he faced down the possibility of death, since he stepped down as Black Paladin? Since he got to space? Since he stepped into the cave protecting the Blue Lion, in the first place, a year before she fly them to their destinies?

No matter what stupid things he’d done, death hadn’t come for him in retribution.

_Hasn’t_ come. Keith thinks, it won’t, so long as he keeps at least some measure of his integrity. So long as luck and and the damn fool instincts that have gotten him out of all his impulsiveness in the past holds fast. So many people in so many different contexts have tried to convince him that his choices are going to lead to his death. But even if his actions aren’t exactly sane, repeating the same ones over and over again and expecting a different result, a result where what he does means that his friends, his family, can be safe, and protected… it’s like he told Shiro, those many months ago:

_As many times as it takes_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For an accurate image of Keith in that last scene, just imagine that shot in 2005 Pride & Prejudice where Elizabeth stares at herself in the mirror while the lights speed-shift from afternoon to twilight.
> 
> SERIOUSLY I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back here. 
> 
> I realized this week as I beat the crap out of myself trying to edit this monster that one of the reasons (apart from traumatic life circumstances lol) I’ve stopped myself from updating is that this is where it gets less fun, and this is where I get super sincere about the “referenced future ships.” As it says in the tags, this fic series is canon compliant. Klance is endgame; but not the endgame of this particular fic or the two that follow. And I’m much more terrified about sharing it now than I was when I was but an innocent newbie to the VLD fandom and was unfamiliar with The Discourse *grimacing face emoji*


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a loooooot of introspection in this chapter; be prepared for a lot of self-indulgent musing about the parts of canon I wanted to address but didn’t want to re-write.

~~_?.?.2115_ ~~

~~_Quantum Abyss_ ~~

~~_Forest on a Giant Space-Faring Atmosphere-Producing Mammal_ ~~

_Day 23_

It was supposed to be just another mission.

“Krolia” was supposed to be just another name of another faceless Blade whom Keith would meet and forget, the next in a long line of colleagues to whom he would make sure he was never close enough to miss, so he could get back to the grind of it all without any guilt, could return and…

Well.

To embark upon the next in the never-ending string of missions, anyway.

Whether it would be necessary, or helpful, is anyone’s guess. Keith isn’t really sure whether, since the Kral Zera, there’s good in _anything_ the Blades have done. He’s not sure that, from the second Lotor occupied the Galran throne, the spy collective hasn’t been punked to within an inch of its ten-thousand-year-old life.

What were their original missions, when Keith started with the Blade of Marmora? When he went through his Trials, and trained, and then however many months ago abdicated leadership of the team that had become his family in order to-

To do _what_?

Keith sighs, and knocks his head back against the trunk behind him. The tree he’s sat under lies in the thick copse they’ve taken as shelter for the “night.” Camping out, again. Krolia thinks they’ve nailed down a spot that will serve well as a longer-lasting fortification, though they’re a few days away from having it secure enough to hold, even temporarily. Keith had at first been adamantly against the idea of any more permanent steading; why were they going to waste time building defenses when they weren’t sure how long it would be before they got through the Quantum Abyss? When they could better spend their time training or planning? Krolia had, not unkindly, noted that the limited calculations they were able to make, when all of their equipment had still worked, suggested that they’d be here months—if not more. Keith had been forced to accept the logic.

Anyway, the appeal of sleeping under something other than a canopy of what look like trees but, given the colors and shapes of foliage, are decidedly nothing like the plantlife Keith—who has visited a grand total of three hundred and seventy-two planets at this point and knows a thing or two about alien foliage, thank you very much—has ever seen.

Snuffling over the ground under this thicket of not-trees is the creature who’d crash-landed before them on the second “day” of their time in the Quantum Abyss. Krolia doesn’t know _what_ kind of animal it is, but she is sure the thing is female. Keith, however, has decided that whatever manner of being it is, the creature is close enough to a wolf to earn the label, and that the wolf is _definitely_ male and is _always trying to tell Keith something_. Right now, with all this nosing around in the dense, orange and purple of a forest floor, the space wolf is telling Keith that this is probably a sound enough place for tonight. Or, at least, that none of those creatures who attacked the wolf that first day are anywhere within half a day’s walk. Because when they are, he becomes increasingly feral and impossible to calm.

He’s a reliable little comrade, is the wolf, regardless of his quirks or his sometimes sullen-swift reaction or the entirely-too-cute poof of a scruff around his neck.

Keith knows the creature has saved their lives at least twice, so far, in the Abyss.

He takes his eyes off the wolf and lets his head fall back. Again, he remembers, when he feels the slight tenderness where he’s knocked the back of his head against the trunk already. It’s worth the reminder. There are so few places Keith can vent his frustrated thoughts now; Krolia, for all that she’s apparently his mother and has endless patience for his decidedly, sometimes purposefully, less-than-perfect communication skills, still feels like a stranger, and Keith has never been one for extroverted thinking, anyway.

What was the internal-monologuing over, again?

Right, the Blades’ missions when he started.

He remembers very well:

\- Objective One: to track the movement of the heir presumptive.

( _Not_ , as Keith would only find out when he learned about the Kral Zera, “heir apparent.” An heir apparent is more certain: someone who stands to inherit regardless of loyalty or even the birth of another, more legally sound, successor. But apparently the Galra don’t operate that way, and never have: apparently, it’s _usually_ the warchief-come-king-come-emperor’s eldest child that triumphs on the sacred mountain, but that’s no guarantee. As always, with the Galra, it’s about power. Lotor has always been the one presumed to win at the Kral Zera with Zarkon’s blessing endearing the other powerful Galran leaders to his claim.

But it had never been a sure thing.

Keith swears that revelation nearly gave him an aneurism. What the _fuck_ had they been wasting all that time chasing after the prince for if his title give them only a roll-of-the-dice chance at knowing who the next Emperor would be?)

\- Objective Two: to find the source of the new quintessence.

…Keith doesn’t really want to go into Objective Two, okay? It’s the reason he’s stuck here, in the Quantum Abyss, waiting to break through to the end whether he’s patient enough for it or not.

Anyway, Objective One had been a resounding success. The Blades did track, and capture, and then _fucking ally_ _with_ Lotor. And Lotor did gain control over the Galra Empire, however fragmented—fulfilling his presumptive role as heir. All of the Blades’ work concerning the potential power vacuums in the Galran empire, as its power had been divided before, had paid off, despite the gambit it had been to keep appraised of Lotor’s whereabouts.

But had being chummy with the new Galran leader gotten them any closer to meeting Objective Two?

No.

No, Lotor’s ascension had certainly not revealed the source of the new quintessence. The new Emperor hadn’t taken a single meeting with Keith—in his official capacity as link between Team Voltron and the Blade of Marmora, or in his decidedly unsanctioned capacity as one sincerely pissed off human-Galra hybrid with a sharp and magical knife—since occupying the throne. He’d brushed them off at every turn. And Kolivan and the other senior Blades had simply continued to track leads in the old way, relying on their own cunning and deep-state intel to generate leads and instigate missions. How any of them will play a role at all in ending the war—

Keith clunks his head against the tree trunk, one more time, threading his hands into the detritus while he’s at it.

And the dirt under his fingernails is honestly whatever at this point. As is all his thinking about this. Because _now_ , Keith can’t play any fucking role at all. He’s stuck out here, with his biological mother, away from his friends, away from the Blades, away from Voltron, and he can’t do anything except brood.

***

_Day 64_

However long they’ve been here, there is a _lot_ of time to brood.

Almost too much. Even for Keith.

That’s always the thing, with time. There’s either too little or too much of it.

He’s got nothing to complain about, when it comes to the content of this stretch of time. Sure, there are days in a row where the creature they’re riding gets close enough to some celestial body to set off natural disasters beneath its generated atmosphere. And there are other days where the only other being they encounter are intent on killing them. Spending his hours and days and weeks with his long-lost mother, however, isn’t half bad other than that. Despite their extremely rocky introduction, it is something he’s finding he wished he’d had sooner in his life.

Without putting too fine a point on it, Keith’s time with Krolia is illuminating. Fun, even.

And devastating. And frustrating. Time with family so often is. He may not know a lot about that, having been without blood family since he was nine years old. But he’s learned some things from his time with the paladins.

Keith discovers where some of his own strange ticks come from. The extreme double-jointedness that he had always handwaved—and then put off as Just a Galra Thing, once he learned of his heritage. The tendency to speak so earnestly, even when the situation so clearly calls for something else—no less aggravating, even knowing that it comes from her. Even the way his hair lays when it’s messy—an impossible texture that no barber had ever been able to really tame.

In their little encampment, things are always messy. They construct some primitive fencing, to deter or at least slow the creatures constantly trying to lumber into their camp. But this is living at its most raw. There are no supplies to be spoken of, other than what they’ve carried with them: no additional weapons, no cooking utensils, no paper or cloth or soap or anything that people usually make a life with. Even with all their pouches and pockets, the preparations the Blade of Marmora have instilled in them both, they both go a little feral.

Keith thinks that both of them rather like it that way.

He gets to train like hell, with no distractions. He gets to raise the wolf; he’s never had a dog, and this one—alien that he is—growls and yips and cuddles his way into being probably the closest companion Keith has ever had apart from Shiro.

And Keith gets the chance to actually, you know, sleep? For the first time in… Shit, about a month into their slow migration toward the planet at the center of the abyss is the first time in literal _years_ Keith can remember ever sleeping long and deep enough that someone else has to wake him up. None of the places he’s slept in over the last decade have exactly leant themselves to peaceful slumber: foster homes, the Garrison, the shack in the desert, precarious Marmoran bases, even the Castle of Lions. The castleship, least of all. The other paladins may have poked a bit of fun at it, but there’s a reason it took Keith months to stop sleeping in his boots.

After the first few days of sleep uninterrupted by the wolf’s alerting them to the presence some new alien that wants to kill them, Keith has to admit that Krolia’s suggestion that they fortify the little cave was a sound one.

He’s deflecting, even now.

Because of course, _that’s_ what he broods about the most: their allies. They can’t even contact Voltron, or the Coalition, or the Blades. They have no equipment and no ship. Nothing but atmosphere and animal by-product.

They are powerless in the face of this place.

Krolia points out that they are lucky. And they are, in many ways. They can breathe the air generated by the creature they’re riding. With enough oxygen left over to make stupid jokes about what the creature is (a space-whale, they decide, even though Keith had never made it to any aquarium and Krolia had only seen the ocean on Earth once, and at that, never from close enough to appreciate the marine life). They can forage for food, even start rudimentary cultivation of some of the most promising edible plant-life. They can build a cozy little encampment and fill it with all the strange things people construct when left to their own, hand-crafted devices. They can talk, and spar, and try to recite stories from memory.

But they have no control over how long it will take them to get back to all of their—all of _his_ —unfinished business.

He doesn’t know how long it’s going to be before he can reconcile his place among the Paladins of Voltron: to determine how—if—he fits there, given his status with the Blades. He’s not actually sure whether he’ll have any relationships to salvage, with any of them. God knows what they think of him, now. Does Shiro think of him? Miss him? Resent Keith, for basically handing him the position as Black Paladin, only to throw it back in Shiro’s face? What about Hunk, who couldn’t even seem to stomach the sight of him, those last few weeks before Keith left for the Blades? Keith never told him half of the things he wishes Hunk knew: that there’s a wisdom and a compassion to him, of the kind Keith has seen in almost no other corner of the Universe. Pidge, he’s sure, does not understand what she should: that there are very few things Keith regrets more than shaming her for trying to leave, for not having the foresight to realize that sometimes, a person is just… pulled elsewhere. Or pushed.

And Lance…

Yeah, Keith can’t even begin to wrangle his impressions of Lance into coherency.

There are too many questions, about all of it. All of them.

***

_Day 103_

“How long has it been, for them?” Keith asks.

It isn’t the first time he’s asked this question; but it’s the first time since he’s had a dream—memory—quantum-vision-whatever-the-fuck, of any of the other paladins apart from Shiro and Lance.

It was Hunk, this time. He’d figured out some boss engineering move that Keith certainly did not understand, even with the help of fate and psychic vision, and which, despite his genius, was genuinely afraid to put the calculation into motion, to mess with the castleship that deeply. But he’s sure. He’s nervous, but he’s so _sure_ , still tremulous but not cautious, facing one surefire direction.

Keith wants to know how long he’s been that sure. How long they’ve been falling into these beautiful places, without him. Keith isn’t exactly a patient person. He does want to know; it’s not jealousy, or vanity, or even self-deprecation; he wants to know because for the love of god, he willingly joined a group whose motto is “Knowledge _or death_.”

Fortunately, Krolia makes up for Keith’s own lack of patience, in spades.

Like the other times, Krolia breathes indulgently and looks at him.

“How long has it been for the Paladins of Voltron, since you’ve seen them?” she asks.

Keith ducks his head, stumbles over a lie before he manages, “Y-yeah.”

They’re foraging today. The blue-green-yellow of the nearby nebula turns her face, her purple and alien and increasingly familiar face, into rainbows—patiently arched eyebrows, the dip of a half-smile.

With the precision of a soldier—and the patience of a saint—Krolia answers him, “According to our numbers, no more than a few quintants since we lost the ship. And it should not be much more; their time moves more slowly, the further inward we get.”

Keith nods, looking into the pile of their spoils rather than at her. He doesn’t have to look into her eyes to know: they’d be patient, so patient. And he can’t stand it. Not in place of the irritation, or even anger, he deserves.

She’d already explained to Keith, as they scraped their way out of Warlord Ranveig’s base, what going into this place would be like. Space-time is different. Distance is arbitrary. Linear time dilates, exponentially, the closer they get to the planet at the center of the abyss.

So asking questions like “how long” or “how far” or any shade of “are we there yet” is meaningless. Neither of their vambrace devices have operated in _movements_. Keith thinks it’s something to do with the gravity wells; these things are supposed to be durable enough to last through fire, frost, every kind of atmospheric contaminant or irregularity. So it’s not only that they’re no longer able to consult their electronics. It’s that even if they did have a few hard points of information to go off of, the erratic nature of this place might render it meaningless.

Still, he can’t stop himself.

Once they’re back to their cave with the spoils—the plant-life and the space-vermin that fill up the sacks they brought back with them—Keith tries to poke at the embers of their fire, building it up under the cooking meat of the little rodents they’d caught today and the not-chestnuts they’d gathered in the space between. But it’s no good. He’s sure, by then, that this rash tendency of his to say more than is needed was inherited from his Pop. Not from her.

“I just wish we had some way of knowing, _exactly_ how much time it’s been. Or that we could… charge any of our equipment, so we could do more accurate calculations. Or—damn it.” His fire-poker breaks off at the end. He tosses the entire thing on top of the flames, knowing it for a waste. He’ll need to craft another one. “I wish we could do anything at all except sit here—but even if we _did_ have any of that information-”

“Keith.”

This time, she makes him look at her. But her fingers are gentle at his chin. He knows even before she finally tilts his face upward, that her gaze will hold nothing but tenderness, but grace.

Only a few people have ever treated Keith this gently.

But she’s his mother. And, for now, it’s just them. They are alone, and reliant on each other, lost in space-time. He can’t retreat from her, the way he’s retreated—or at least, tried to retreat—from everyone else who’s held out a hand to him.

“Do you think I didn’t tick off every single quintant of the almost nineteen decaphoebs it took to see my only child again?”

His mother’s voice is so wet, now. Keith’s mouth drops open. It’s a shocking comparison: a pain he can’t even begin to fathom, or to respond to.

As he makes noises like he wants to try to respond, anyway, Krolia shakes her head. The firelight dances over the markings on her face. He’s still not sure if they’re hereditary, or if they’re tattoos, or even scarring—and he’s too embarrassed to ask her.

“Counting didn’t help me, Keith. _Knowing_ didn’t help me. It won’t help you. I promise you that.”

If he cries, he knows, she won’t judge him.

But he can’t. Even here. Even now.

“…I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. But, you _can_ wait.”

Keith breathes. He can wait, clearly. He is waiting, now. So he nods and keeps his mouth shut.

Again, she looks at him, with all that fathomless patience. It runs a little wry as she continues, “You start to learn, in a war, that life goes on. Your allies will be there, waiting for you to take your place among them, as many times as it takes for you to get back to them. However long it takes, too.”

Keith doesn’t complain about the time, ever again.

Krolia teaches him a dozen techniques on mental discipline, after this incident. At least some good comes out of his childishness. He learns how to wait, for one thing. He learns how to receive patience, how to be forgiven. He learns how to process some of the things he’s never said out loud, and he learns that there are, in fact, some people who are safe to process with. Far from the least of whom is the only blood-family he has left, the only parent who will ever known him as an adult.

He confides a lot in Krolia.

But he’d be lying if he said he told his mother everything.

***

_Day 174_

Keith continues to internalize—in particular, the quantum-visions.

He and Krolia talk about them a lot, when they first start to experience them. Keith learns how Krolia got her start with the Blades, how his parents met, even what he, himself, was like as baby. Krolia learns that Keith’s always been able to get by on his intuition but that he sucks at math. His mother also learns a few things he’d rather she didn’t know, like the fact that he got booted from the Garrison because he punched a superior officer in the face—among other, even more scandalous transgressions.

Other visions, they do not discuss.

These happen more and more frequently. One of them will be watching over their camp; there are too many things trying to kill them in this place for them to sleep other than in shifts. But while they’re sleeping, there are no barriers up. Visions come long and merciless and with sensory details that just aren’t present when both of them are awake.

Krolia does not ask Keith about the interminable time his nine-year-old self spends standing over his father’s grave.

Keith does not ask Krolia about the family she leaves, or the one that she chooses, or the sister who dies. (Even if she is—was—Keith’s aunt. Even if that is the one vision after which Krolia can’t pretend she doesn’t cry).

In particular, Keith does not discuss with Krolia those visions in which he experiences the pasts and futures of people who aren’t even here with them—however that’s possible. But it must be. It’s been happening since the entered the abyss. After all, his first vision of (what Keith thinks is) the future is as follows: of Shiro, looking half-crazy and for all the world like he’s about to mow down everything in his path, Keith included.

It’s far from the only time he has that vision.

He comes out of it, once, dead certain that not only is it going to happen but that, had Keith not stepped down as Black Paladin, it wouldn’t come to pass at all.

Wouldn’t _have_ come to pass? Won’t come to…? Christ, verb-tense becomes so confusing when you’re living in a reality where space-time is subjective.

Regardless.

If he had never left, there wouldn’t be a future waiting for him wherein Shiro looks at him with pure malice in his eyes.

Watching Krolia sleep, grounding himself in that vulnerability instead of his own, Keith is shuddering and trying so hard not to fall back into the vision, now. Sometimes he does that. Sometimes he claws into the inevitability of the visions, needing a point to it all, needing the instructive lesson that surely lies somewhere within the flashes of future—

Krolia is asleep. Keith breathes. Tells himself that he is awake.

He doesn’t have to speak. Doesn’t have to explain to his mom how this particular vision sets his stomach protesting worse than when they had tried to eat one of the five-legged creatures that kept skittering through their little space-garden. Much worse: because this isn’t a bout of food poisoning that makes it way out of the system after a few hours. This parasite of a thought burrows its way into Keith’s brain, his heart, and poisons his blood supply.

One day, soon, they’re going to get out of this place. They’re going to return to their activities with the Blades. And Keith is going have to figure out what it means that he let himself internalize their philosophy: the mission, before anything. Before anyone.

With the context of what Krolia had done, how she had been able to maintain loyalty to her family and to her cause, both…

Keith’s abandonment of his own family—of Voltron—starts to look that much uglier.

But, for now, the revelation doesn’t change anything except his ability to stomach the thought of eating breakfast.

***

///

***

The quantum-visions are so fucking weird.

Some of the future, Keith _knows_. Somehow. In bits and snippets, in feelings and shades, watercolor permanent like the blues and greens and yellows of the sky on the space-whale. Keith knows the past, too, that what he does in that memory-vision, those actions he knows-lived-observed in memory—now, _knows_ those moments, has them burned into his mind and into his _soul_ from seeing them from the point of view of others who shared those moments with him.

There’s an end, for all of them, and it lurks not far from the corners of their reunion.

Frightening, and inevitable, and _triumphant_.

But first, he has to rejoin them. He walked away; now, he has to walk back.

And at one point there seems to be a fucking game show wherein-

_Keith picks you. And you pick Keith. You don’t do that with people you just want to vote off the island, okay? It’s not strategic: to pick someone whom you know will pick you._

_Unless you know your votes will cancel each other out, because you’re—_

Whatever, there is no goddamn way any of that is real.

(And if it is, Keith picking Lance out of all the other paladins to survive absolutely does not mean anything other than that

_space-game-show-Bob, a dick of cosmic proportion_

space-game-show-Bob will put Team Voltron under incredible pressure and force stupid decisions out of them.)

~~dreaming~~ speaking of stupid decisions:

_The mornings after the Battle at Naxela, you wake up first._

_Keith looks so vulnerable, and so young, spread out in his own bed. All the lines on his face are still there; but they are quieter, a softer rendition of things this war has carved into all of them. Tracings, only. Potential, for now—but you have a feeling you’re going to see each of them turn into a permanent line._

_Slowly, Keith opens one eye, and then the other. Like he isn’t used to waking up in anything other than a panic. He offers a confused little sound from the back of his throat, and you squeeze yourself in against the front of Keith’s body, press the two of you together from thigh to shoulder. You buried your face against the top of Keith’s head, shamelessly nosing your way into his hair and taking him in. The tired, sex-hazy smell of him. The feel of his surrender._

_The night after the two of you sleep together for the last time, you don’t wake up to Keith’s absence. Nor his avoidance. Rather, you wake up, together. You get up, out of Keith’s bed, and get dressed. You are, the both of you, frankly, amazingly mature about everything._

_But when you collide, again, so many movements later, you’ll think that it would have been better to wake up to an empty bed, rather than watch Keith turn his back on you and walk away._

_Again, and again._

***

///

***

_Day 371_

It’s been over a year, and Keith still isn’t used to the way his quantum-visions will sometimes shift point of view. He’d been thrown, at first: not sure what he was seeing, until he realized that it wasn’t, technically, something _he_ had actually seen. Keith obviously remembers that moment, when he walked away from Team Voltron for what turned out to be the last time. But this most recent time he relives it, it’s from Lance’s point of view.

Krolia meets his eyes over their fire and says, “He’s important to you.”

(“He’s very dear to you,” his mother had said, the fifth or sixth time he’d had a Shiro-related vision. Keith isn’t sure what to make of the difference between the words “dear” and “important.”)

Keith shrugs. “They all are.”

Krolia stares at him, one eyebrow slightly raised. Somehow it’s not judgmental: only factual. “Trusting someone with your body is a step beyond trusting them with your life.”

Keith makes a sound that roughly resembles “ohmyfughn,” pressing a hand over his face. He’s not going to hope that the ground opens up and swallows him whole—because that actually happens sometimes. The ground they’re living on is the surface of a living creature, after all, and they’re basically bacteria, subject to the biospheric requirements of a sentient planet that _does_ sometimes open up and shift and recycle its surface in unpredictable ways.

But the hope is a near thing.

“I didn’t know it was as common in humans, however. To pair with the same reproductive sex.”

Oh my—

This is so fucking embarrassing; Keith _never_ thought he would have to come out to a parent. It was _so_ convenient, when he’d realized that the only adult he’d ever have to come out to was _also_ gay. Shiro was already engaged to Adam when Keith came around, of course. Galra sensibility must be different, however, because Krolia doesn’t look at all embarrassed. At least she doesn’t, from the one eye Keith cautiously opens to look at her.

“No need for distress,” she continues, with an absolute lack of mercy. “Among the Galra, it’s not rare that brothers-in-arms become lovers.”

“Mom- please,” Keith manages to choke out. “That’s not the way it is anymore, so, can you not…”

Krolia nods. “That, too, is not unusual. These ties can shift with the battle lines.”

“Oh my god.”

Keith rolls his eyes heavenward. Bluegreen, the permanent twilit glow soaking over the stars fill his vision. He tries to focus on that, and not on the contemplative noise Krolia offers.

“I’ve overstepped.”

Keith shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

“Is it something you don’t wish to speak about?” Krolia asks.

And Keith knows that if he told her to leave it alone, she would. She would shift topics as easily as she shifts the grip on a weapon, as easily as she moves from speaking about the agony of losing a lover and a child to speaking about losing the trail of their next hunt.

He shakes his head.

“…No, it’s fine.”

Krolia scoffs—very quietly. “You said as much.”

Keith looks up at her. “I mean, _it_. The whole thing with—with Lance. That is one conversation that is really going to suck, but he and I—are going to be fine. If you want to know.”

_He_ knows this—even if he’s only realizing it as he says it aloud. Despite all their petty bickering, and the rivalry thing, and the leadership thing, and the hooking-up-and-never-talking-about-it thing, he and Lance are going to be okay. Keith will _never_ admit this to Lance—but they’re going to be okay _because of_ Lance.

“He’s got this…” Keith starts gesturing, useless, hands falling into his lap like dead fish. “This uncanny, endless capacity for forgiveness.”

Krolia makes a soft, permissive sound. She’s so hard, sometimes. She’s the consummate soldier, efficient and mission-driven. But sometimes, there’s this element of intuition, of what honest-to-god seems like witchcraft, about her.

Or maybe it’s just motherhood.

“He always followed me, you know?” Keith adds, willing her to understand the parts he doesn’t want to voice aloud. “Even if he complained about it. Even when I was, pretty consistently, a shitty leader.”

“You demand a lot, from those that follow you,” Krolia says—and it’s _almost_ in his defense.

Keith laughs. “I used to wonder how he can be like that, when he seems that shallow.”

“But he is _not_ shallow, of course.”

It’s not a question, but Keith shakes his head, anyway. “Lance… likes to play it off that he is. It’s like he doesn’t care whether he looks stupid—as long as someone is looking.”

Keith used to wonder where that came from. Now that Keith has been spending all this time with his mother, however, he understands. For the first time, he’s understood: how much it _matters_ , what his mother sees, and thinks, and believes about _him_.

So much of what Lance is comes from being forged in a big, close family. Tempered over painstaking years: through fights with siblings, through condescension from loving grandparents, through the endless parade of family members who mean well but wrong each other, and regularly.

Keith, solitary and inflexible, never managed to forgive the endless parade of harried and unprepared social workers, foster families, ill-equipped youth mentors, COs. Never had the time.

He has time, however, now.

***

_Day 558_

Time helps Keith understand a lot of things.

That he needs to do a lot of damage-control when he gets back.

That that’s probably going to be pretty ugly.

That the rest of this war is going to be absolutely _hideous_ —

That the Blades could be more useful in making the war effort less so for the people in the galaxies attempting to recover, both now and once the war ends. No other organization Keith knows of in this vast Universe is equipped to do so much with so few agents, so few resources. Even Krolia is on board with Keith telling Kolivan about his ideas on where they need to invest their skills, now. Recovery. Helping the fallen and the broken. Not on chasing a brand of magic that’s so tangential as to be irrelevant to Lotor’s early dealings as Emperor.

That…

That what had happened between him and Lance was not romantic. It was attraction, certainly, and kids messing around, and space booze.

But still.

Time also helps Keith understand that someone probably doesn’t drive you that fucking crazy if you don’t love them at least a little.

That he does. He does love Lance. He loves all of the paladins. Shiro is his family; their bond goes without saying, or trying to describe. Keith knows how much Shiro believes in him, even when it’s not particularly warranted. Keith knows exactly what he would do—probably will do—for Shiro, too, and Keith is less afraid of it now than he was the first time he experienced the battle between them. Hunk has become a brother—which is why it had been so annoying when Hunk had started describing the ways Galra!Keith was different from regular Keith. And then, of course, Pidge is like a little sister, and Allura, who despite no one knowing her actual age feels like an older one…

But it has _always_ been Lance’s evaluation of him that has gotten under Keith’s skin.

Keith may have tossed it right back in the team’s face, but he is never going to forget the moment he’d understood that he’d come to rely on Lance. They’d been in the Lions’ hanger. The paladins were— _he_ was—facing the fact that they needed a new Black Paladin after Shiro disappeared. Everyone had looked to Lance. Not to fill that role: but to talk Keith into taking it. Which Lance had done, with surprising gentleness.

Keith knows exactly why it had been such a relief when Lance hadn’t had a damn thing to say about Keith’s lineage. Why it had mattered _so much_ that, while the Black Lion had chosen Keith, it was Lance’s belief in him that had changed Keith’s mind, that had made Keith accept, when even Shiro couldn’t get him there—that it was Lance who then insisted the paladins stick together when Keith led them into Thayserix—and, later in that encounter, that it was Lance who effectively said, “Yeah, you fucked up. But we’ll fix it. As a team.” Why Keith couldn’t help but saying something so soft and sentimental as “Leave the math to Pidge” when Lance had come to Keith to talk out his concerns about his own place on the team.

Keith knows exactly what he owes Lance.

He doesn’t know whether to call Lance his best friend, or his star-crossed soulmate, or his ex.

But no matter how many more missteps he makes with him, they’ll come to an understanding.

However long it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get a little annoyed every time I think about the fact that in S06E02, two years go by in literally 70 seconds of screen time. But again, these are the types of gaps-between-canon opportunities that I loooove to write about. In fact I was half-tempted to construct this entire story as a quantum-flashback, but it didn’t work with all the POV switching. If I weren’t so focused on the analysis of the kl relationship, I think I might have spent even more time on this chapter.
> 
> Also I’m honestly shocked that there’s not more Quantum Abyss fic on ao3. (Though there is [some](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16405112) [good](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17176871) stuff I recommend and am always up for recs.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://utlaginn.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/utlaginn)!
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